


Advent Calendar 2020

by redgoldblue



Series: Advent Calendars [8]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010), Leverage, MASH (TV), Phryne Fisher - Kerry Greenwood, Psych (TV 2006), Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series, Supernatural
Genre: (although very repressed ones), (minor) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Baking, Chicken Soup, Christmas, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Fluff, Christmas pancakes, Coda, Coming Out, Domestic Fluff, Eliot angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode AU: s01e01 Pilot (H50), Episode: s03e02 The Reunion Job, Episode: s03e15 The Big Bang Job, Episode: s10e19 Heroes, Episode: s10e22 Aloha (Goodbye), F/M, Family Feels, First Kiss, Fluff, Gen, Grumpy Eliot Spencer, Hurt Eliot Spencer, I love him, Love Confessions, M/M, McDanno bickering, Multi, Panic Attacks, Peg POV, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s10e22 Aloha (Goodbye), SPN post-series, Sickfic, Singing, Starfleet holiday parties (derogatory), Steve's return home, Supernatural old spice commercial, They're Just So Coupley That The Fam Didn't Realise They Were An Actual Couple For Three Months, Triumvirate, Yes you read that right, and they were bondmates (oh my god they were bondmates), but ignoring most of 15x20, cec's strays, family photos, funny family H50 piece featuring, gratuitious bastardisation of Hawaiian mythology, h/c, homophobic homosexual carlton lassiter, hotel Christmas, in this case subtitles are right and it's Cesare, is it an advent calendar if i don't do at least two of those, it's deancas you know the drill, just. soft, middle of the night ptsd convos, mini marshmallows (mentioned), mini marshmallows make a recurrence, missing scene/coda in the airport, more SPN post-series actively ignoring 15x20, punnihawk relationship negotiations, repression/pining/gay yearning, scar cataloguing, slow and warm rather than angsty though, sorry ao3 and fandom wiki, talking about Sophie's neurolinguistic programming, the O'Reilly farm, the mature rating is only for one chapter (the 16th; destiel if you're interested), there's a lot of food this year. i might be hungry. anyway, we're back on 'this could be steve/danny or steve & danny bc it's the same as canon', we've now had Hardison pov and Parker pov so Eliot pov next up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 34,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27818899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redgoldblue/pseuds/redgoldblue
Summary: *welcome to chili's voice* welcome to the advent calendar.If you have not been to this series before: hello, come in, expect a lot of fluff, a fair amount of h/c, and a reasonable amount of Christmas-related stories as we tour my myriad fandoms for 24 days.If you have been to this series before: you know what's up feller-me-lads welcome back i am honoured you return to my humble abode.Either way: check the tags for more specific info on the chapters, or just come inside.
Relationships: Albert "Bert" Johnson & Cecil "Cec" Yates, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, B. J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Burton "Gus" Guster & Shawn Spencer, Carlton Lassiter & Shawn Spencer, Castiel/Dean Winchester, James T. Kirk/Spock, Sophie Devereaux & Eliot Spencer (Leverage), Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: Advent Calendars [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/205337
Comments: 21
Kudos: 85





	1. Let's Take The Road Before Us (And Sing A Chorus or Two)

**Author's Note:**

> So this year I've decided to embrace my newfound inability to do any other sort of titling, and all the chapter titles are going to be song lyrics. It's 2020 the concept of cringe no longer exists. On a more serious note, thanks to COVID fucking my uni timetable, I am still in exam period for the first week and a half of December, so I may get a bit more seriously behind than usual, but I promise I will catch up entirely on the 10th/11th if so. Oh, and likely contender for fandom of the moment this year: Leverage.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This does not have as much Christmas content as the 1st usually does, but it is technically there. It's highkey soft, anyway.
> 
> Fandom: as always, Star Trek  
> Ship/s: Jim/Spock  
> Title from: 'Sleigh Ride' by many, many people

For the last three hours, thirty-two minutes, and forty-eight seconds, sleigh bells had been intermittently not only jingling from the other side of their quarters, but also ring, ting, and tingling too, if Spock was any judge of the matter. For the last one hour and sixteen minutes, Spock had been sitting on the floor of the dimmed antechamber, watching smoke rise from the last of the incense that he had picked up last time they were this close to Vulcan, and attempting to make the bells fit into some sort of rhythmic pattern that would allow him to meditate to them. He had failed. The bells rose to a clamour, with a woman’s voice crooning something indistinct in the background, and Spock sighed and called out, “Jim, at risk of sounding like I am quoting McCoy – would you please shut off that infernal noise?”

“Oh! Yeah-” the bells stopped, blessedly, and Jim bounced out into the main chamber. “Sorry, Spock,” he said, and Spock nodded at him. 

As he passed on his way out the door, he brushed a hand over Spock’s shoulder. Spock automatically slammed his mental shields up the moment Jim began the movement towards him; there had been a thrumming, manic energy at the other end of the bond all day, and being exposed to it through touch would comprehensively ruin any chance he had at successful meditation for the day. He could still feel it vibrating through the shields, but as Jim left their chambers and moved away, it began to abate.

Spock folded his hands into his lap, closed his eyes, and fell into actual meditation.

Half an hour later, Spock slowly surfaced, then frowned, pushing his shoulders back. That had been rude. Well, technically Jim had also been being rude, but he was clearly anxious about something. Spock was the one who was not supposed to let his irritability express itself, especially in Jim’s direction, not when it had been caused merely by the general elevation of noise and colour and loud emotion that came with the holiday season aboard _Enterprise_. An environment which Jim usually enjoyed, and he was now worried that his own irritation had had something to do with the negative undercurrent to Jim’s emotions.

He unfolded himself from his sitting position and stood up. He was almost to the door before he paused, and stepped back to pull a ra’ishkar flower from the bundle which Sulu had provided him from the greenhouse. The crew would no doubt look a little askance at their first officer wandering the corridors holding a bright red and green flower, but Jim would appreciate the gesture, especially since its colours mimicked his Christmas colour palette.

His first stop was the greenhouse itself, since Jim sometimes found it soothing to sit within it, but it was empty of all movement except for the Kaaeel plant, which lunged at him when he unwisely got a little too close. Sulu and all other humans onboard were perfectly safe tending to it, but it liked the taste of copper a little too much for Spock’s safety.

Exiting the greenhouse rather more rapidly than he’d entered it, he spied the intercom across the way, and thought to check something. Depressing the button, he said, “Spock to bridge.” Jim was not on duty for another four hours and thirty-three minutes, but occasionally when he had nothing else to do he nevertheless wound up on the bridge, usually annoying whomever actually _was_ on duty.

“Aye, Commander,” replied one of the ship’s undoubtedly most recognisable voices. “Scotty here,” he added, unnecessarily.

“Is the captain on the bridge?”

“No, he came sniffing around here earlier, but I sent him off quick smart. No idea where he went after that, I’m afraid.”

“Very well. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“We’re on track to reach Vulcan at 1800 standard, by the way, sir, right smack bang in the middle of next shift. Good luck finding the wee bastard!” Scotty finished cheerfully, essentially confirming that whatever Jim had been doing on the bridge had been directly interfering with the bridge crew. Spock’s lips quirked in amusement as he rang off and continued down the corridor.

As he approached the string of rec rooms at the end of the corridor, Jim’s presence in the back of his mind began to grow a little more pointed, although it still retained the muted quality which suggested that Jim himself was using what little blocking skill he had to dull the bond link. Well, it was little compared to a Vulcan; for someone from a species with a very low psi-rating, he had grasped the concepts rather well. Considering the alternative options of either opening every rec room door to check for him or of appearing rather foolish to any passers-by by retracing his steps up and down the corridor, he settled on the latter and continued to the end of the corridor, then walked back to the start of the rec rooms, attempting to locate where the bond felt strongest. Pacing slowly back to the end, he stopped two doors from the end. Rec Rooms 5 and 6 were on either side of him, and he turned to his left to open the door of 5 first.

A quick scan of the room revealed no sign of his bondmate, but Sulu was seated on the far side of the room, surrounded by a gaggle of other senior crewmembers, from which he could identify at first glance Lieutenants Chekov, Riley, and Zh’raalnor, Yeoman Rand, and Nurse Chapel. Chapel noticed him in the doorway and waved a hand. “Spock, hello!”

“Hi, Spock,” Sulu echoed, looking up from the PADDs laid out on the table that they were loosely gathered around. “Do you know how long we have until we arrive at Vulcan?”

“Approximately seven hours and twenty-five minutes, according to Scott’s most recent assessment,” Spock answered, taking one step inside so as not to appear discourteous.

“Would you recommend ze markets in central ShiKahr or in Tahl more?” Chekov asked.

“We’re making plans for where to go on this leave,” Rand explained, a little unnecessarily.

Spock shrugged fluidly. “It depends on what you prefer. The markets in ShiKahr are larger and busier, as one would expect, and are more focused on everyday goods, but Tahl has some excellent craftsmen with rather more esoteric pieces.”

“Hmm…” Chapel hummed, making a note on one of the PADDs.

“Thanks, Spock,” Sulu said, and all gazes returned to the table, leaving Spock to back out, the door sliding closed behind him over the sound of continued discussion.

The first thing Spock saw when the door to Rec Room 6 opened was Uhura, out of uniform and wearing long, loose trousers and tunic in a shimmering material which seemed to change colour every time it moved. She was sitting cross-legged on top of one of the tables with her own Vulcan lyre in her lap, holding court over the room as she sang a soft ballad in a language which Spock recognised as being her native Swahili, but unfortunately was not fluent enough in to understand the lyrics. Various crew members were scattered in chairs throughout the room watching her, including, he noticed, Dr. McCoy in the far corner. Jim, though, was sitting on the ground in front of the table she was on, leaning precariously against the legs and back of an empty chair with his legs drawn up, enabling him to rest his elbows and chin on top of his knees. His head was tilted back to watch Uhura, and there was a clear overlay of peace to his emotions now that Spock was close enough to feel it properly.

Dr. McCoy spotted him first, and waved him over. Spock frowned at him, for form’s sake, but made his way quietly around the edge of the room towards his table and took the seat across from him as Uhura finished her current song, paused, and began another of a distinctly different tone, an Andorian carol which Spock recognised as being a frequent favourite in slightly seedy interstellar bars for its easily remembered and rather suggestive chorus. Not that the suggestiveness really worked for anyone other than an Andorian, but that had never discouraged anyone. Everyone who had been quietly sitting forward laughed and stretched, including Jim. Someone started a steady beat against one of the tables, and everyone else in the rec room joined in, keeping time until the chorus came along. This provided some auditory cover for McCoy to lean on the table and say to Spock, jerking a thumb at Jim, who had still failed to notice Spock’s presence, “He was vibrating on a string about ten feet high when he came in, and just made some kind of Iowa mumble when I mentioned you. Uhura fixed the first part, but you better fix whatever it is you did to him.”

“I did nothing to him,” Spock objected, then corrected himself. “That is to say, I did – what is the colloquial term – I ‘snapped’ at him before he left, but he was already high-strung, and I do not truly believe he took it to heart.”

“Yeah, no offense, sweetheart, but I’m not convinced. There’s any number of things you could have said without realising. I know he’s not usually horrifically sensitive, but when he gets in that sort of mood he can be worse than my ex-wife.”

“I am _aware_ , but nevertheless, I did not do anything.”

The chorus began, and Jim rose to his feet to join in, and promptly spotted Spock across the room. There was a complicated little twist at his end of the bond, but he waved cheerfully enough and abandoned singing along to make his way over to them.

“Hey, Spock,” he said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the myriad voices singing about antennae and seaweed. He raised two fingers, allowing Spock to brush his own over them, then took the third chair. “What’s that?” he asked, nodding at Spock’s other hand, and Spock looked down at the flower that he’d forgotten he was carrying.

“Oh,” he said, and held it out to Jim. He smiled, cheeks rounding, and took it, tucking it behind his ear.

“Alright, if you two are going to get all lovey-dovey, I’m leaving,” McCoy grumped, and stood up.

“Bye, Bones.”

“Goodbye, Doctor.”

“Hmph,” he replied, and made a fair attempt at sweeping out of the room.

“Jim, what is wrong?” Spock asked as the door closed behind him.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he denied easily.

“T’hy’la, I can feel that something is wrong,” Spock pointed out, tapping the side of his own head lightly to indicate the bond. The manic energy of earlier had not returned, but he still felt a little uneasy, like rippling sand dunes in the wake of a dust storm.

Jim chuckled slightly. “Right. It’s nothing, I’m fine. I’m sorry about earlier with the music, I was just trying to distract myself with Christmas carols, but I didn’t realise you were trying to meditate.”

“Jim…”

He waved his hands in the air. “Really, it’s nothing. I’m just-”

Spock glared at him, and he sighed.

“I’m just a little nervous about this holiday leave.”

“…why?”

“I don’t know, it’s like meeting your girlfriend’s parents for the first time. And going to their home.”

Spock didn’t bother to pull him up on the gender differential, assuming he was citing some old Earth tradition. “You have met my parents before,” he said instead. “And been to Vulcan before.”

Jim sighed. “Yeah, but I’ve only talked to them properly either as Captain Kirk or over a commlink. I didn’t get a chance to really see them at the bonding ceremony apart from Amanda kissing my forehead and Sarek glaring at me from across the room.”

“I do not believe he was glaring,” Spock commented. “That is just his resting expression.”

Jim laughed properly at that, which had been the desired response.

“You’re sure you are alright?” Spock checked.

“Yeah, of course, it was stupid. It’s still stupid, maybe, a little bit, but I’m sure it will go away once we get there. How long until we get there?”

“Seven hours, twelve minutes, and approximately eighteen seconds.”

Jim laughed again, and reached across to grasp Spock’s arm. Spock left his shields down this time, and the faint undercurrent of nervous energy was buried under a wave of affection. “I love you, honey.”

“I do not know why a precise time estimate prompted that,” Spock replied, though he partly did know. “But I love you also, ashayam.”

The Andorian song finished, and Uhura played the starting notes of a very old Vulcan love song. Spock looked up in some surprise as he recognised it, only to see her looking over at him and Jim. She winked at him as she began to sing. He gave a small smile in response, and leant back to listen, Jim’s hand still resting on his arm and love flowing through the open bond link.


	2. I'm Hearing Sleigh Bells, I'm Seeing Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As promised, I am already behind. Oh well. Here's yesterday's. Set during season 1, before the offices got blown up :( And yes, Sophie Devereaux is Jewish in this house
> 
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Ship/s: mildly implied Parker/Eliot/Hardison and Nate/Sophie.  
> Title from: 'Christmas Eve' by Kelly Clarkson, one of my fave Christmas songs

Hardison was sitting in the front room instead of the conference room, even though there was only one chair out here and the desk was awkwardly high even for him. He had reasons for this. The wi-fi signal was ever so slightly faster out here, for one. The speaker system he’d set up to play a carefully selected list of Christmas carols had slightly better sound out here, for another. The last reason was rapidly approaching the door now, if Hardison was any judge of those footsteps. They were very distinctive footsteps.

Eliot was clearly in a Mood, although Hardison couldn’t even guess at the reason. The man’s life outside of Leverage Consulting was still an absolute mystery to him, even though he might, maybe, have done some very minor digging on him. He’d come up with his military record – impressive – and basically nothing else. He was blaming it on Eliot’s inherent Luddite tendencies. Hardison was preparing a crack about the possible crimes the front door had committed to deserve the amount of violence he’d displayed in throwing it open, but it was interrupted by the look of absolute horror on Eliot’s face as he looked around at the tinsel and lights strewn over the office. His head was moving very slowly as he surveyed the Christmas-themed tornado, and his body was entirely, freakishly still, like he was about to start punching the fake snow piled in the corner.

“Hardison, what _is_ this?” he ground out, and Hardison really hadn’t ever known before he met this guy that he could get _any_ pleasure out of being subtextually threatened, let alone this much.

“You like it?” Hardison asked, just to see Eliot turn his squinty blue-eyed glare on him. “I decided we needed to redecorate for the holidays.”

“This is strategically unsafe.”

Hardison put his laptop down to wander around to the front of the desk, allowing him to properly admire his handiwork. By which he was referring both to the decoration and the reaction it had elicited. “Has anyone attacked us at the offices yet?” he asked, then answered his own question. “No. Anyway, I’d be down to watch you choke someone out with a piece of tinsel.”

“Me too,” came a voice from behind him, and he almost jumped straight into Eliot’s arms.

“Jesus, Parker,” he said, releasing his breath and turning around. She blinked innocently at him from where she’d appeared on top of the desk.

Eliot, who naturally was entirely unruffled by Parker’s incredible unvanishing act, did that thing he did when he was uncomfy with something but couldn’t entirely justify it, where he sort of tucked his chin down and somehow made his hair floof out like he was an angry cat. “Did you clear this with Nate?” he asked, waving a derogatory hand around him at Hardison’s masterpiece.

“Nate may be the boss, but _I_ am the interior decorator,” Hardison replied with great dignity.

“So that’s a no.”

“You don’t like the decorations?” Parker asked, with what sounded like it might be a faint hint of disappointment, but it was hard to tell with Parker.

“No, Parker, I don’t,” Eliot replied. “They’re too reflective, they’d be distracting in a fight, and you could potentially get caught in them.”

She nodded, casting an inspecting eye over the room, then said, “Okay, but if you’re not fighting in them. Do you like them then?”

He frowned at her, apparently having to take a moment to wrap his head around the concept of evaluating something outside of the criteria of ‘would this help me beat someone up’, then did his little survey thing again, pausing and squinting even harder as he noticed the Santa hat appliqué on Nate’s portrait. “They’re overboard,” he finally informed Parker.

“Boy, I don’t know what your Southern family Christmases were like, but as far as me and my Nana are concerned, it ain’t Christmas unless it’s overboard.”

“And it’s sparkly,” Parker added. She’d been a staunch and enthusiastic supporter of the glitter tinsel, over and above her unqualified support for the whole endeavour.

The door swung open again, forcing Eliot to step slightly further inside so he wasn’t actively blocking the doorway. Sophie and Nate were leaning towards each other, laughing, as they came inside. Sophie was wearing an extremely stylish fur-lined red pillbox hat that Hardison was pretty sure she’d stolen from a Swiss heiress at some point along with a matching red wool suit that looked like the designer had looked at ‘80s powersuits and ‘40s New York bourgeoise-does-working-class dresses and gone ‘how can I make this one outfit?’. Nate, on the other hand, was smothered inside a mostly shapeless black coat with one of the fedoras that Hardison was constructing a plan to subtly bonfire jammed as far down onto his head as it would go, which sort of ruined the power-couple look they could have had going on.

“What’s going on?” Nate asked, taking in Eliot’s folded arms and Hardison’s mild look of offense.

“Eliot doesn’t like the decoration,” Hardison answered.

“Of course he doesn’t, it’s fun,” Nate said lightly. 

“Hey, I’m fun!” Eliot protested. 

“Yeah, sure, if your idea of ‘fun’ is deciding to take down twelve heavily armed security guards by yourself and scare the willies out of everyone around you, you’re the definition of fun,” Hardison said.

“I got them all,” Eliot pointed out, tossing his hair like a ‘90s high school movie mean girl. 

“And you looked very hot doing it.”

Parker hummed in agreement, and Eliot smirked. 

“Still wasn’t fun, though,” Hardison continued.

“And you’re fine with this?” Eliot accused Nate, ignoring Hardison.

Nate looked around at it all and shrugged. “Sure. Offices often decorate for Christmas, it helps us look normal. And it’s fun.”

Eliot switched his gaze over to Sophie, who smiled benevolently and said, “It’s a little garish.” Eliot prepared to look smug, but she immediately followed it up with, “But it’s not my holiday, and it works to keep up morale. And Nate looks good as Santa,” she added, gesturing at the painting.

Eliot grunted, clearly outnumbered but unwilling to admit it.

“Will you make hot chocolate?” Parker asked cheerfully. “Hardison tried, but he burned the chocolate.”

“ _How?_ ”

“Look, our kitchen is not exactly top of the range, and maybe I miscalculated how long the milk would take to heat up, and-”

“Yes, I’ll make you hot chocolate,” Eliot interrupted.

“With mini marshmallows?”

“Ooh, yes,” Sophie agreed.

“If we have them.”

“We have them,” Nate said. “Sophie predicted the need for mini marshmallows.”

With a grand sweep of his arm, Hardison led the way through to the conference room, keeping one ear cocked for-

“Dammit, Hardison!” Eliot exclaimed as he caught sight of the giant pine tree covered in baubles that was standing in the corner of the conference room, and Hardison grinned in satisfaction.


	3. barefoot in the kitchen became my religion, listen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're clowning, okay? we are all just clowning. I was actually already back inside this particular clown car even BEFORE 15x18 aired, but I don't know whether that's going to count as evidence for the defence or the prosecution when I am brought before the high judge on multiple crimes of clownery.
> 
> Fandom: Supernatural  
> Ship/s: Dean/Cas  
> Title from: 'Cornelia Street' by Taylor Swift, very slightly misquoted (sorry Katie I know that's offending your delicate academic sensibilities)

A ruffle of wings, then, “You called?”

Dean started, almost dropping the photo he was holding, then shut his eyes and exhaled. “Jesus. Remind me to show you the Addams Family, I reckon you’d relate to Lurch.”

Cas blinked at him, that innocent wide-eyed ‘oh I’m just a naive angel’ look that he pulled out when he didn’t feel like confrontation, and repeated, “You called me.”

“No, I didn’t,” Dean said, pointing at his cell, which was lying across the room on the kitchen table. “See, no phone.”

“Not rang. Prayed.”

“I didn’t do that either.”

Cas frowned. “I heard you, though.”

Dean dropped the stack of photos onto the step next to him and got up to pour them both coffee, since Cas seemed to be here now. “You getting delusional in your old age, buddy?”

“No. You’re sure you didn’t pray? At all? I may have heard it even if it weren’t explicitly directed at me.”

Dean looked up to raise his eyebrows at Cas, who had that adorable little wrinkle between his eyes that he got when he was trying to solve a puzzle. “What, angel radio’s got me on an automatic redirect to you or something?”

“Or something,” Cas agreed, which could mean anything, really. 

“I wasn’t praying, man, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Hm.”

When Dean turned around, holding two mugs of coffee, Cas was sitting in Dean’s vacated spot on the step, picking up the photos, and Dean admitted, “I was thinking about you.”

“Why?” Cas asked, leafing through them. “I’m not in these photos.”

That wasn’t true, actually – they were family photos, so of course Cas was in some of them. There was one that Mary had taken of Sam, Dean, and Cas all studying lore together in the library, and one of the time Jack had tried on his trenchcoat, with Jack twirling around to make it spin out and Cas, coatless, smiling at him in the background. Sam had taken that one, because Dean had been laughing too hard. But he hadn’t been looking at those photos when Cas appeared, so he let the comment pass. “That wasn’t what I was thinking about,” he said instead.

Cas frowned up at him, which Dean ignored, nudging his knee with his foot until he shifted over, letting Dean sit down next to him. The step was, actually, plenty big enough for two people, but Cas had moved the absolute minimal possible amount, so they were pressed together from shoulder to knee. Dean kicked his legs out in front of him, which solved that part, but he could still feel the heat radiating out of Cas’s three layers of shirts and into his own two layers. He was ignoring that. It was being ignored. He handed one of the mugs over and Cas took it absentmindedly. Steam rose up off it in little tendrils, dissipating as they reached his face. He was still staring at the photos in his other hand as he said, “I suppose it’s possible that if you thought about me with enough focus…”

“You saying I did the prayer version of butt-dialing you?”

“…yes.”

Dean chuckled and moved enough to bump his shoulder against Cas’s before they settled back together. He took a sip of his own coffee and peered over at whichever photo it was that Cas had been watching with such intensity. It was a pretty normal one – Dean, Sam, and Mary, gathered around the war table, eating Chinese takeout and bickering over some document laid out in the middle of the table. Dean couldn’t recall the specific moment, and didn’t know who took the photo, but given that it seemed to be pre-Jack, Cas was the most likely option. Dean had no idea either why he’d taken it, or why he now seemed so intent on it.

“What _were_ you thinking about?” Cas asked, still not looking at Dean.

“Like I said. You.”

That made Cas turn his trademark frustrated-judgy expression on him. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Dean sighed, then instantly regretted it as Cas responded, not by leaning away at the expansion of Dean’s chest, but by leaning in. Technically, he probably could have pointed out the whole personal space thing and Cas would have moved to the other side of the step, but if he did that, well, Cas would be on the other side of the step. And probably also look hurt, and he wasn’t sure which one would be worse. “Uh. I don’t know. I was looking at all those photos, and I realised that almost all of them, they wouldn’t exist without you. I mean, not just the ones that you’re in or that you took. There’s only one or two in there from before you dragged me outta hell, and you’ve just kept dragging us out of situations ever since.” It was an edited version of what he’d been thinking, maybe, and it left out some things, but it would do.

“That’s true of all of us. You and Sam, and everyone else, have rescued more people more times than I have rescued you. The Winchesters save the world, remember?”

Dean, this time, turned to look at Cas. Blue eyes were avoiding his, fixed at a point somewhere over his right shoulder. “Yeah, maybe,” Dean said. “Maybe the Winchesters save the world, but Castiel saves the Winchesters. At least, this Winchester.” And maybe that was one of the things he’d been leaving out, but it was worth the risk of saying it to see those blue eyes flit down, skimming Dean’s face before they landed on the coffee in his hands.

“You saved me too, Dean,” he said softly, like he was afraid the words might break something if they were spoken too loud. “You save me.”

Dean had nothing he could say to that, so he said nothing, just raised his coffee to his lips. Cas’s gaze followed it, breaking away at the last minute to his own mug.

The coffee left warmth in its wake as it slipped down Dean’s throat, but the heated feeling of compression behind his ribcage, moving with each breath, came from an entirely different source. It was that feeling that drove his body into movement, apart from conscious decision, raising his arm until it rested around Cas’s shoulders. The angel stopped breathing for a moment, stilling under the touch, then he released a great breath and relaxed, shoulders drooping under Dean’s arm. Cas wrapped both hands around his mug, leaving the stack of photos to slip off his knee onto the ground, and with a movement that seemed interminably slow even as it happened all at once, he dropped his head down to rest on Dean’s shoulder.

From the scattered photographs, one of Dean and Cas stared up. They were in Baby, Dean in the driver’s seat and Cas in the front passenger’s, the photo taken through the windshield by an unnoticed Sam, and Dean knew from memory that ‘Fortunate Son’ was playing on the radio, the last song to play as they got back to the bunker. They were looking at each other, a faint smile on both of their faces, and what was hidden from view in the photo was their hands, resting on either side of the seat divide, inches away from each other.

There was one more thing which Dean had left out from what he’d been thinking, but with Cas heavy against his side and the kitchen filled with nothing but the smell of coffee and the sound of their shared breathing, he thought maybe that was okay.

Maybe, for right now, it could stay unspoken, and just be felt.


	4. I'll Walk With You Straight To The End Of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm tempted to apologise for this, but honestly, if I was ever going to write a werewolf AU, of course it was going to be for H50. and this is a werewolf AU, not an A/B/O AU, I'm very firm on that. It's loosely inspired by Gail Carriger's San Andreas Shifters series (which I. heartily recommend. gay family-focused werewolves, people), but the lore isn't exactly the same.
> 
> Fandom: Hawaii Five-0  
> Ship/s: none - you could read pre-Steve/Danny if you wanted to really really squint, but no more than you can in the actual pilot. Actually, less.  
> Title from: 'I've Been Searching' by Kristin Diable

Setting up a task force seems to involve more paperwork than Steve had dealt with in his entire military career, and the military wasn’t stingy with the paperwork. There were documents scattered all over his hastily set up desk, he was pretty sure he was supposed to sign at least half of them, and he had no idea what most of them meant. Accordingly, he’s pretty damn pleased when he hears determined footsteps come in through the front door of their newly appointed headquarters and head towards him. At this point he’d take someone trying to kill him over these pieces of paper. Maybe Hesse’s just decided ‘to hell with it’ and come to blow him up in person.

It’s not Hesse, but he’s not sure the little depressed blonde bullet that it is harbours any less ill intent towards him. He sort of looks like he wants to blow Steve up as he stalks inside.

Their first meeting had been all gunpowder and grease and adrenaline, and all Steve’s nose had been able to determine about Danny at that distance was ‘werewolf’. Also ‘pissed off’. So when the stocky, grumpy, confrontational man appears in his office, close enough to smell and without confounding factors (other than the smell of paper), Steve doesn’t think it’s entirely unfounded that he drops the file he’s holding in surprise and says, “You’re a Beta?”

Danny almost growls. “Yes, I’m a Beta, _enforcer_.”

“Try again.” Steve doesn’t know why people always think he’s an enforcer, considering that he doesn’t at all have the body type. Enforcers generally look like someone’s taken a steroid-chomping bodybuilder and turned the muscles up by 30%. Of course, having said that, Steve’s personal favourite enforcer, Chin Ho Kelly, is leaner than he is. But still, Steve may be strong but he’s not enforcer-type strong. The assumptions made a certain sense when he was in the military - people assume every military wolf is an enforcer, even though, clearly, pack structure still has to exist. But apparently it had carried over into civilian life.

Danny takes a step closer and sniffs, then rolls his eyes. “Alpha. Of course you’re a fucking Alpha.”

Steve smirks. Of course he’s a fucking Alpha.

Danny frowns. “Alpha without a pack?” He looks suddenly concerned, which Steve assumes is beta instincts kicking in, since the man has shown precisely no inclination to care about him otherwise.

“I was military pack,” he explains shortly.

“You had to leave to come back and find Hesse.”

“Yeah.” Steve doesn’t bother to explain that he was in the process of leaving anyway - or, more precisely, in the process of getting kicked out after a packmate saw him kissing a human man in a bar on shore leave. The human bit wasn’t a problem, the man bit was. If Danny stuck around, he’d figure it out soon enough, and if he didn’t, well- no point in spreading around how close he’d come to a dishonourable discharge. Instead, he elaborates with a different part of the truth. “I wasn’t in Alpha role there, anyway - pack already had an Alpha when I joined. Military packs can handle two Alphas better than normal ones, but meant it wasn’t a terribly comfortable situation.”

“I can imagine,” Danny says wryly.

“You’re packless too,” Steve points out. “Beta without a pack is almost worse than Alpha without one.”

“No, Beta without a pack just means I get depressed. Alpha without a pack means everyone in their immediate vicinity is in pressing danger of grievous bodily harm at all times. Actually, this explains a lot about you.”

Steve ignores that comment - he’s sort of right - and stays silent until Danny sighs and says, “Yeah, I left my pack back in Jersey. I love them, and I miss them, but I wasn’t the best Beta to them anyway.”

“Why?”

Danny raises his eyebrows. “Have you met me?”

“Yes.” Yeah, he was surprised that he was Beta, but that didn’t mean he was a bad one. Some Alphas needed someone who’d butt in front of them and tell them to shut up.

Danny shrugs it off in a way that makes Steve’s heart ache a little. “Just because I’m ranked that way doesn’t mean I’m good at it.”

He wants to reassure him, but he hasn’t known him long enough to be able to confidently tell him he’s wrong - and he’s not good at reassuring anyway. Instead, he says, “Well...” then trails off and shakes his head. “Never mind.”

Danny frowns at him. “Spit it out, Alpha.”

“Just, there’s no open pack on Oahu. Which I’m sure you know.”

“Yeah. Maui pack sent an offer to join them when they found out I was here, but I couldn’t be that far away from my daughter.”

“One of the others that I’ve recruited for the task force is a wolf shifter too - he worked with my dad. Chin Ho Kelly.”

Danny blinks at the apparent change in topic, but goes along with it. “Kelly. So he’s part of the Kelly pack - kukama, then, not werewolf.”

“Yeah, but it’s the same principle, just a different background. He’s been on the fringes of the Kelly pack for years - old disagreement, bad history.” Not his place to tell Danny Chin’s story. “And he’s an enforcer.”

Danny finally clicks. “Oh no, I am not forming a pack with you. You can force me to work for you, you can’t force me to Beta you.”

“I wouldn’t try to,” Steve says immediately. You can’t force an Alpha-Beta relationship to work anyway, even less than you can force any other pack dynamic. “But it might be inevitable,” he points out. “Two loners working together would be likely to pack-bond anyway, even without throwing Alpha-Beta into the mix. And a pack of two is gonna be mighty unstable.”

Danny glares at him, clearly aware that what he’s saying is true and equally clearly unwilling to admit it. “How about this, huh? If, out of some miracle, I stop disliking you for long enough to pack-bond with you, then you can try and get Kelly to leave his pack. And in the meantime, we keep going our own merry separate ways whenever we don’t have to be working together.”

Steve shrugs. “That works. More pressingly, uh… you wanna help me with these forms?”

“No, I do not.”

“If you want to get paid, I think you’re going to have to.”

Danny _does_ growl at that, and it’s a completely stereotypical Beta growl – long, from the back of the throat, and with absolutely no serious threat in it. “Fine, Alpha,” he says, and Steve’s never actually heard anyone use Alpha as a derogatory term before. He sort of loves it. “How are they organised?”

“…They’re not.”

“Oh, my god.”

It takes them a grand total of a week to pack-bond, and another week and a half to admit it. They’re the weirdest pack in probably the entirety of America, only four of them; two werewolves, a kukama, and a human. They’re also one of the most stable Steve has ever seen, and Steve’s seen a lot of packs. After Kamekona Tupuola learns that Chin Ho Kelly has formed a new pack, they get the full co-operation of the local po’e’o’ō network behind them, and it’s always better to have the rooster shifters on your side. That already solidifies them on the island, and then, when a case takes them into their territory, Kono sees fit to reveal that she has deep ties to the Kaikamahine o nā Mamala from her surfer days, the shark shifters who are so reclusive that they became known by three different names (the Daughters of Mamala, the Mamalalei, and the kū'mano) before anyone on the islands realised that others had been spoken to by them. After that comes out, there’s barely a shifter or non-shifter anywhere in the islands who’d dare to cross them, for the sake of their soul if not their body.

They’re the weirdest pack around, but they’re the strongest, and the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alpha (derogatory)
> 
> I spent more time researching Hawaiian mythology and language than actually writing this and I'm still sure I got things wrong but: kukama comes from Ku, a mythic figure who changed between dog and human form, and kama, meaning child; po'e'o'ō comes from mashing together the word po'e, which is used to refer to groups of people, and o'ō, which means to crow like a rooster, and seems like the sort of linguistic blasphemy which the rooster shifters would perform; Kaikamahine o nā Mamala translates literally as daughters of Mamala, who was a goddess who could shift to shark form and was associated with surfing; Mamalalei is just Mamala plus 'lei', which historically has been used as a suffix to denote one's child; kū'mano is the prefix kū, which denotes similiarity or resemblance, plus mano, which means shark (and since sharks are ancestor figures in Hawaiian culture, it makes sense that shark shifters would be viewed with great respect).


	5. Take Me Now, Baby, Here As I Am / Hold Me Close, Try To Understand (because the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to us)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Longest title, as befits the longest chapter so far - I may actually post this as its own fic but even if I do. y'all get a sneak preview, First Views Unlocked. I did promise h/c - there are apparently 26 Big Bang Job fics, so here's my contribution (oh and. I know they probably didn't live above the bar in s3, but we have no idea where they DO live, so I'm proceeding with my hc that Hardison was just like 'i own the building so we live here now')
> 
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Ship/s: Parker/Eliot/Hardison  
> Title from: 'Because the Night' by Patti Smith, although I was listening to Bruce Springsteen's version, and it's partially his song too.

At some point, early on, before the three of them had figured it all out but after they’d realised there was something to figure out – before they’d blown up the offices – Parker had asked him. Well, not just asked him, with no prompting, she’d known he wouldn’t like _that_. Okay, maybe she hadn’t. Anyway, what actually happened was–

“I gotta say, the whole ‘ooh big macho bad man’ thing is a lot less convincing now that I’ve known you for more than like, a week.” Hardison was sprawled out across three different chairs in the conference room, and Eliot squinted suspiciously at him over the back of the chair he’d spun around on the other side of the table.

“Most people get more intimidated after they’ve seen me work.”

“Most people haven’t seen you go to five different grocery stores looking for mini marshmallows because you can’t deal with having regular sized ones in your hot chocolate.”

“ _I_ can deal with regular sized marshmallows. Parker can’t.”

“Mini ones are better,” Parker said. Hardison jumped, nearly sending one of his chairs flying, and she realised they couldn’t see her from inside the air vents. She dropped down, making Hardison screw up his eyes and mutter, “Jesus,” and she briefly tried to come up with some way of sitting on the table where she could see both of them before giving up and sitting in the chair next to Eliot. It wasn’t that she had anything against chairs, exactly, but the table allowed more freedom of movement. 

“Why would people get scared when they see you work?” she asked Eliot, who blinked at her. “I mean, it’s not like you kill people,” she attempted to explain. “Why don’t you kill people, anyway?”

Something in his face darkened, and he turned away slightly. He’d taken his hair out when they got back from the Nicaraguan Embassy, and the movement made it fall across his face, shadowing his eyes. “I just don’t. Seen too much death,” he said, words skipping over each other. “Inflicted too much death. Let’s go back to talking about marshmallows.”

Parker shrugged, and Hardison jumped in with some comment about chocolate moustaches, and that was that. 

No-one had told Parker and Hardison what had happened in the warehouse or in the hangar before Moreau got on the plane, but when they’d got back, Eliot had stayed in the bar only just long enough to hear Nate tell them the basics of the plan before he’d disappeared upstairs. Parker, Hardison, and Sophie had all thrown worried looks at each other as Nate frowned at Eliot’s back, but they let him go. Half an hour later, Sophie cast a glance at the clock, jumped, and proceeded to chivvy all of them out of the bar, telling them that they needed their sleep if they wanted to take down Damien Moreau in an entirely different country. She walked off to wherever it was she was currently staying, and Nate, Parker, and Hardison ascended the stairs, waving tiredly to each other at the top as they separated.

It was dark inside their apartment, and Parker was halfway to the living room before Hardison had finished fumbling around, closing the door behind him and turning the light on.

Parker was good at seeing things in the dark, but it still surprised her seeing Eliot on the couch. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees, stock still, staring blankly ahead. Parker turned to check that there wasn’t anything on the TV, but he was looking at a blank screen. Hardison came in, and Parker looked at him. This wasn’t her thing, she didn’t know what to do with emotions. That was Hardison’s thing, when Sophie wasn’t around. Tech and emotions. Not that Eliot was really displaying any emotions, but for most people that was an emotion in itself, Sophie had said. Or it meant they were hiding emotions. Sometimes Eliot just hid what he was feeling because that was what he was used to doing, but this didn’t look like that. He was too still.

Hardison took a step towards the couch, and that must have set off something in Eliot’s head, because he jerked up, spinning until he was facing them. He wasn’t in a combat stance, exactly, but he was standing like he did when he was counselling Parker on techniques, right before he settled into a combat stance. Even though Hardison refused to let Eliot teach him properly, he must have recognised it too, because he stilled and raised his hands. “Hey, Eliot,” he said softly. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said roughly. “You guys should go. No, wait.” He cast a glance around the apartment, looking like he was clocking where he was for the first time, and continued, “I should go.” He ran a hand through his hair and turned on his heel, heading for the door. Before he could get there, Hardison had dashed across and inserted himself between Eliot and the doorway. 

“Nuh-uh,” Hardison started, and Parker slipped around the other side while Hardison had him distracted, to stand with her back against the door handle. “I am not letting you go wander the streets in the middle of the night having a panic attack and scaring innocent civilians. Me and Parker, we’re the innocent civilians.”

Eliot dropped his head slightly, levelling his gaze up through his eyelashes at the taller Hardison. 

“It’s no use looking at me like that, I know you’re not actually going to punch me. At the best of times, let alone right now. And hey, even if you did, Parker’s right there,” Hardison said, gesturing behind him at Parker, who was oddly touched that he’d noticed her moving. “You gonna punch Parker to get out? Huh? No?”

Eliot winced slightly and looked away. 

“Didn’t think so.”

Eliot glanced back at both of them, then spun and stalked back into the flat and through to the kitchen. Parker and Hardison looked at each other, and Parker shrugged. Hardison sighed, then said, “C’mon,” and followed Eliot into the kitchen, Parker trailing behind him. She didn’t like seeing Eliot like this, but it was better than leaving him alone. 

He was sitting behind the island, back to the hard marble. His legs were drawn up to his chest, arms folded on top of them and head resting on his arms. It was such an uncharacteristic pose for their brash, broad-chested Eliot that she froze in place for a second. He’d gotten bigger and louder over the last year, like he was finally, instinctually, comfortable taking up his space around them, and it made this look even more wrong. Before they’d gotten Nate out of jail, he’d always sort of seemed like he was sitting in the corner even when he was in the middle of the room, and now he felt like that again. His hair should’ve fallen forward to cover his face in this position, but somewhere between the front door and the kitchen he’d roughly tied it back. Parker really, really wanted to reach over and pull out the tie, like his emotions would all spill out with his hair and he’d stop looking all locked up and hurt and robotic. That wasn’t what Eliot was supposed to be like. He was quiet (at least, next to Hardison), but he wasn’t silent. He was steady, not flat. 

Hardison dropped to sit on the floor across from him, pulling his long legs up enough that they didn’t trap Eliot in but not so much that they didn’t bump against him. Parker swung up onto the counter next to where Eliot was sitting, because she didn’t think they should both be across from him. That would seem too much like they were trying to fight together against him. He needed to feel like someone had his back. Hardison frowned up at her, because he didn’t always get how her and Eliot’s brains worked, but when she nodded, he looked back at Eliot. 

“Hey, Eliot.” There was no reaction, and Hardison sighed and continued, “Why’d you try to run away, man?”

Eliot’s head was still buried in his arms, but his words were clear as a bell. “Dangerous. Shouldn’t be around you two when I’m dangerous. Might hurt you. Can’t hurt you.” Even though he was dropping the pronouns, he said it in a monotone, like they were just simple facts that he was reciting, and it made Parker’s chest hurt. Of course he was dangerous, that’s why they needed him on jobs, but he wasn’t dangerous to _them_. He was never dangerous to them. 

“Hey, Eliot, baby.” It was a pet name Hardison hardly ever used on them, not seriously like this, and it meant Eliot had made his chest hurt too. It was probably unintentional that it was the most innocent name possible, but good. Babies were very non-threatening. “I don’t know what you did, but whatever it was, that was the old Eliot. It’s not who you are anymore. And we trust you. New Eliot. Hey.” He reached out and patted Eliot’s knee, the sort of brief questioning touch that he knew to do with either of them. When Eliot leant into it, he lifted his hand and ran it along the back of Eliot’s head. Eliot relaxed into it for a moment, then tensed again and withdrew, lifting his head up.

“Hardison, I threw you in a pool, man, why are you–” He gestured between Hardison and the rest of the room. Hardison seemed to know what the gesture meant, which was good, because Parker couldn’t really tell other than ‘something Hardison was doing’, which had been obvious from the words anyway.

“Technically, Moreau threw me in a pool, you didn’t actually lay a hand on me,” Hardison pointed out. “And yeah, I was mad about it, and don’t get me wrong, it’d take a lot of convincing to get me near water with you for a while, or actually near water at all, I might not go swimming ever again if I can help it–”

Parker glared at him, and he realised what he was saying and switched course. “But I mean, I figure, if you’d pulled me out we would’ve just both been shot by all his henchmen, y’know? And your best chance at saving me was to keep talking, and it’s a good thing you kept a clear enough head to know that, because I definitely would’ve just gotten us killed if I’d been where you were.”

“Yeah, it’s my job not to get you killed. I didn’t do great at it today.” He was breathing just slightly too fast and deep, but Parker didn’t know what to do about it.

“Hey!” Hardison objected, spreading his hands. “We’re all alive. No-one died.”

Parker couldn’t see Eliot’s expression, but whatever it was, it made Hardison rock back slightly and correct himself to, “Uuuhhh… none of the good guys died?”

“You _know_ that good guy-bad guy thing is bullshit, Hardison,” Eliot replied, and he mostly just sounded sad, but at least there was a tiny bit of anger behind it. Anger was good, anger got you up and made you say and do the things that needed to be said and done.

“Okay, but. Did someone die? Who died?”

Eliot’s fists clenched, and his head dropped again.

“Alright, you don’t have to tell us.”

Parker sort of wanted to know, but it seemed like this might fall under Eliot’s earlier request for her not to ask, so she stayed silent. Whoever he’d killed, she was sure they’d deserved it, and she didn’t really care anyway, so. It was fine.

“Like I said, we trust you anyway,” Hardison said, and she nodded, even though Eliot couldn’t see her. “Just…” He held out one hand, resting it palm-up on his own knee, where Eliot would be able to reach it. “Let us help? With whatever this is?”

Eliot stayed silent, but Parker shook her head at Hardison when he opened his mouth to speak again. Hardison knew about waiting for them, so he closed it again.

It took a while, until Hardison had started looking like he really really wanted to say something, but eventually Eliot shook his head a tiny bit and reached one hand out to Hardison.

Eliot’s fingers were resting in Hardison’s now, but just barely, so lightly that Parker wasn’t even sure Hardison would be able to feel it. Parker swung around, hooked her toes over the back of the island so she wouldn’t have to think about maintaining the position, and lowered herself down until her torso was hanging next to Eliot. After a moment, he reached one hand up near hers. She didn’t really want to touch, all the locked up and sad and scared in the air had made her skin go funny, but sometimes Eliot smiled when she touched him, and he needed to know that they didn’t find _him_ scary, so she reached down and took it. She wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it because she was watching him so closely, but it seemed like his shoulders relaxed a little bit at that, so she firmly told herself that she didn’t care about the touching – it wasn’t that bad, anyway, because it was Eliot – and squeezed his hand tighter.

“I haven’t felt – like this – for years,” Eliot muttered. “Not proper like.” His words were running together, kind of, but not messily or jerkily, more like that– that music thing, that he and Hardison said sometimes. Slurring, but the music version, where you just pushed the noises together without stopping. 

“Can I take your hair tie out?” Parker asked, because it really didn’t seem right for it to be tied back if he was opening up now, and maybe it’d help him to say things. Eliot and Hardison both shot her slightly confused looks, like they sort of understood it but not really, but that was good. That was more normal, both of them not _really_ getting something she said, and they usually didn’t need an explanation to go along with her anyway, so she didn’t bother explaining. 

“Sure,” Eliot said, and dipped his head again to let her access it. She twisted to the side and carefully pulled it out, keeping her fingers away from his head in case he didn’t want her to touch it. He didn’t like people playing with his hair sometimes, the same way she didn’t, only she didn’t like it ever and other times he did like it. But she hadn’t checked this time.

His hair fell out, dropping over his shoulders, and she sighed in relief as she slipped the hair tie onto her own wrist. He pushed it behind his ear on the side she was on, so that she could still see his face, and he looked a bit more relaxed too. Still in pain, but like maybe he was letting himself notice it now.

“You haven’t felt like this?” Hardison prompted.

“Not since– not since I left Moreau. Well, a couple months after.”

“What do you feel like?” Parker asked, and Eliot turned his head to look at her.

“Like… you know how you feel when you don’t understand why your brain’s making you do something? And when someone tries to push you into feeling something? And when you’re faced with a safe, and you know you can’t crack it, and there’s a guard on the other side of the door?”

She nodded. She knew all of those feelings. They were bad feelings, and she appreciated that he was actually trying to help her understand, even while he was feeling like that.

“It’s like all of that at once, only I’m the one trying to push myself into feeling it, and I’m the guard on the other side of the door. And I’m not…” He dropped both of their hands, and roughly shook out his arms. “I don’t know what to do with that, other than punch something.”

“You wanna go in the exercise room? We can come watch you go to town on a punching bag, if you want,” Hardison offered.

Eliot shook his head, sighing. “Wouldn’t actually help, I don’t think. I’m just…” He dropped his head down until his forehead was resting in his hands, and told the floor in a near-whisper, “I’m back to being violence. That son of a bitch took me straight back to being nothing but violence.”

Parker blinked away the burning at the corner of her eyes that Eliot’s voice had caused, and reached down to him again, patting his shoulders until he looked up at her. She knew that feeling too. Not being violence, but she knew about being made to feel like you were nothing but the one thing that other people could use you for. “You’re not,” she said, then checked to make sure he was actually looking at her, listening to her, before she repeated, “You’re not, you’re our Eliot, and you cook us dinner and hug Hardison and help me fix my gear and catch me when I jump off buildings and you tell Hardison when he’s being stupid and get mad at Sophie when she tries to con any of us but always forgive her anyway and you love us and none of that is violence.”

He blinked at her for a moment, then leant in and kissed her, softly, upside-down like Spider-Man and Gwen. (She knew that because Hardison kept a stack of those comics under the bed and she’d read them all one weekend when she was bored.) 

“And we love you for all of it, because it’s all you,” Hardison said. “Do I get a kiss too, or do I have to give a full speech first?”

“Depends, how good’s the speech?” Eliot asked, and his voice was still a bit gravelly, but he was joking. Parker’s speech had worked.

“I mean, I’m sure it would be great, it’s me, but it might not be able to top Parker’s.”

Eliot almost smiled, blinking slowly. “Thanks,” he said quietly, directed at both of them, but more at Hardison, because he was the one who needed to hear things out loud.

Hardison leant forward, bumping against Eliot’s legs in a mirror of what Eliot did all the time to him. Eliot dropped his legs down in response, stretching them out so that Hardison could cross his own and scooch over into Eliot’s space. Parker flipped around and dropped down next to him, bumping against his shoulder before leaning into Hardison, and Eliot turned slightly and buried his face in the point where her and Hardison’s shoulders met. Parker put one arm around his back, and Hardison met her from the other side, curling their hands together. She stayed there for as long as she could, focusing on feeling Eliot’s breathing against her, and when it was finally slow and steady, she dropped Hardison’s hand and slipped back. Hardison wrapped his other arm around Eliot and squeezed tightly for a moment, then they both let go and Eliot leant back, shaking out his hair. “Sorry, Parker,” he said. “You didn’t have to hug us. But thank you.”

“It’s okay. Welcome.”

“Hey,” Hardison said, nudging Eliot with his foot. “Wanna make cookies? I’ve got a packet of Smarties somewhere. Smarties cookies are pretty non-violent.”

“It’s past midnight,” Eliot pointed out. “We should sleep.”

“You gonna be able to get to sleep?”

“No,” he admitted. “But you two should sleep.”

“No way.”

“No, I wanna make Smarties cookies,” Parker added. It would help Eliot, _and_ then they’d have Smarties cookies, so there was really nothing about this situation that wasn’t a win.

“…alright,” Eliot agreed.

“It’s actually 2am, by the way,” Hardison said as he got up and opened up the cupboard to rummage for the Smarties.

“2am cookies!” Parker exclaimed, leaping to her feet, Eliot following her up a little more slowly. “2am cookies are the best type,” she told Eliot seriously, and he got his weird little grin that he sometimes got when she said things to him.

“Even when they’re made from the same ingredients as 2pm cookies?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s about the aura of 2am.”

“Okay. We gonna save Nate and Sophie some of them, or do they lose their quality once it’s daylight again?”

Parker had to consider that. She’d never actually eaten 2am cookies during the day. “I don’t know,” she concluded. “We’ll have to make enough, so we can find out.”

“Extra batches of 2am Smarties cookies, got it.”

Parker bumped her shoulder against his as she passed by him, and he bumped back against her and smiled slightly at her, a proper Eliot smile. She would have sacrificed ever getting to eat 2am cookies again to make sure he kept smiling like that, so the fact that they’d come together, she– well, she would have taken it as a sign that the universe was on their side if she thought the universe sent signs like that. As it was, she just took it as a reason to be happy. For all of them to be happy.


	6. Know You're Not Alone, 'Cause I'm Going To Make This Place Your Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is set late season 1/early 2, because even though it doesn't fit with my Standardised Timeline HC (in which they get together early season 4), it's fun to write baby Grace and baby McDanno.
> 
> Fandom: Hawaii Five-0  
> Ship/s: Steve/Danny  
> Title from: 'Home' by Phillip Phillips (one of my favourite McDanno songs. was played live at sunset on the beach for i think season 9. coincidence? i like to think not)

Something banged downstairs, waking Steve with a start. Next to him, Danny didn’t react other than to grumble something and turn over. When no sound followed it up, Steve checked the clock – 6am – and moved to stand up, grabbing for his gun. Before he could make it all the way out of the bed, though, Danny’s hand landed heavy on his hip. Steve glanced back. Danny’s face was half crushed into his pillow still, but the part turned towards Steve squinted and muttered, “It’s just Grace. Come back.”

“It’s 6am.”

“On Christmas morning.”

“What?”

Danny rolled further towards him, revealing the rest of his confused, half-asleep face. “What, you and Mary never annoyed your parents by waking up at 6am Christmas morning?”

Steve put his gun down. It took him a minute to remember, but- “Yeah. I’d forgotten.”

He must have betrayed some version of melancholy – one of his ‘faces’, he guessed – because Danny blearily replied, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up your dead dad first thing on Christmas.”

Steve half-laughed, and Danny tugged on his arm. “C’mon, she’ll get bored of pacing around downstairs looking at the presents soon enough, then she’ll come back up to get us. May as well stay warm in the meantime.”

“It’s Hawai’i, Danny,” Steve pointed out as he slipped back under the covers, lying on his back and turning his head towards Danny. “It’s like 78 degrees out there.”

“Will you let me have this?” Danny grumped, curling into Steve’s side. “I may never get to see a white Christmas again, but I can at least pretend to recapture being piled under three blankets with Rachel listening to Grace scuttle around the living room.”

“I think I’m offended that you just called me your ex-wife.”

Danny lifted one arm to pat his chest consolingly. “It’s alright, babe, you’re still far more annoying than she is. Anyway, I thought you liked Rachel.”

“I do. I have nothing against being compared to Rachel, just to your ex-wife.”

Danny gave him a considering look, then shook his head. “You know what, I’m not even gonna touch that one.”

“Mm-hmm,” Steve hummed doubtfully, but Danny followed through, dropping his head onto Steve’s shoulder and pulling on his arm until Steve got the message and shifted to drape it over Danny’s side - which he did fairly quickly, to his credit. He still noticed every time Danny touched him, got slightly distracted every time, even though Danny had been doing it from the day they met. A year now, and the constant touching was still classified as ‘new and weird’ somewhere in Steve’s brain, but he _had_ been trained well enough by now to know what most of them meant. Including the ones that didn’t seem to mean anything, but were just Danny touching him because he could and wanted to. Which had been the hardest to wrap his head around, which was not something he was ever going to say out loud to Danny, because it would only result in that look that was half concern and half ‘oh, so you’re actually insane’. Suffice it to say he hadn’t exactly had a touchy-feely childhood.

His thoughts were interrupted by Danny tapping his side, but before he could be berated for thinking too loud and disturbing him, there was a clatter of footsteps in the hall and the door was pushed open. Steve had from the first refused to ever fully shut their bedroom door while Gracie was staying in the house, which had made Danny look at him with mingled exasperation and fondness, despite Steve’s attempts to explain that it would have been unsafe.

Grace, clearly exercising great restraint, tiptoed in a ways before she realised they were both awake and gave up on the stealth attempt, instead throwing herself up onto the foot of the bed. Laughing, Danny rolled back to his side of the bed, letting Grace crawl up and insert herself between them. She let Danny wrap an arm around her and kiss the top of her head, then wriggled out enough to look up at him and declare, “It’s pancake time.”

“Oh, I don’t know, monkey,” he teased. “It’s still pretty early, we might have to wait a couple of hours for it to be pancake time.”

She frowned vigorously at him, throwing as much 8-year-old force behind it as she could, then turned on Steve. “Tell him, Uncle Steve,” she demanded. “It’s pancake time.”

He looked over her head at Danny. “It’s pancake time?”

“Christmas morning chocolate chip pancakes,” Danny explained. “It’s a tradition.”

“Ah. What differentiates Christmas morning chocolate chip pancakes from any other time chocolate chip pancakes?” he asked Grace.

“It’s Christmas morning,” she replied, in a tone which definitively informed him that she’d thought he was smarter than this.

“Of course. Well, I’m with her, it’s pancake time.”

She bounced around to sit with her back against Steve’s side and folded her arms. Under the force of their combined stares, Danny threw his hands into the air and admitted defeat. “Alright, alright, it’s pancake time. You better hope Uncle Steve has all the ingredients, I didn’t get a chance to stock his kitchen.”

“Of course I do, what do you take me for? Don’t answer that.”

Danny grinned at him, swinging out of bed as Steve stood up and lifted Grace out. He had been intending to put her on the floor, but she immediately wrapped her arms and legs around his torso like her Danny-assigned nickname, so instead he shifted her to a slightly more comfortable position and kept his arms around her. He hadn’t exactly been planning to deadlift an entire child before breakfast, but it wasn’t as if he could put her down now.

Danny led the way downstairs and into the kitchen. Grace, luckily, consented to being seated on the counter as Danny banged around the room getting out bowls, freeing Steve’s arms before his muscles could start complaining.

“Why don’t you ever put your ingredients in sensible places?” Danny complained, and Steve leant on the counter next to Grace and, with a grin, watched him fruitlessly attempt to reach the top shelf of Steve’s cabinets, where the chocolate chips had somehow migrated. He made a particularly melodramatic grab, almost leaping into the air, and Steve nudged Gracie in the side as they started laughing together. Danny turned around and attempted to glare at them, but it broke into a grin before he could quite finish forming it.

“Hey, colossus, come get the chocolate chips or you’ll be eating walnut pancakes.”

“Oh, god forbid,” Steve said fervently, and leant up over Danny to fetch them down.

Christmas morning pancakes were apparently quite a complicated endeavour, and Danny made a solemn attempt to insist on complete silence, which was entirely ruined by Grace’s stifled giggles, which prompted Danny to raise the wooden spoon warningly, which made Steve start laughing. The silence ban was officially broken by the point that he started pouring the mixture into the pan, when Grace leapt down and asked if she could open a present while Danny did ‘the boring bit’. When he assented, she ran out of the room, and Steve moved to stand behind Danny, wrapping his arms around his waist and rising up slightly to rest his chin on Danny’s head, watching the pancake mixture bubble up around the edges.

Danny turned his head up to kiss him briefly, and the kitchen smelt like chocolate and pancake batter, the air was warm, and he could hear Grace scuffling around searching for the right present. This house hadn’t been Steve’s home for years, not properly, but as Grace ran back in, waving something wrapped in bright gold paper, he could feel home starting to creep back in around the edges.


	7. You Think You're A Genius, You Drive Me Up The Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anyway. Homophobic homosexual Carlton Lassiter
> 
> Fandom: Psych  
> Ship/s: lightly referenced/past Shawn/Lassie  
> Title from: 'That Don't Impress Me Much' by Shania Twain, for reasons that will immediately become apparent.

“No, no, look, he was standing on the right, so clearly the force hadn’t kicked in yet, and that’s why the original version is the right one.”

Shawn didn’t even bother to look up from whatever he was drawing out on the notepad on his desk as Lassiter pushed open the front door and walked into the office, and Gus, standing over Shawn’s desk, just waved a hand vaguely at him.

“No!” Gus exclaimed, and grabbed another pen to correct something Shawn had just drawn.

Grabbing at a bag of corn chips on the other side of the desk, Shawn tilted his head to the side, examining it, then crinkled his nose and said, “Well, in the immortal words of Mark Twain, that don’t impress me much.”

“That was Shania Twain, Shawn.”

“No, she was the one that said there’s lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

“No, _that_ was Mark Twain.”

Lassie’s admittedly not-that-long-to-begin-with tether reached its end and snapped. “Why the hell is Guster here, anyway?”

“It is _our_ office,” Gus pointed out, putting the pen down. 

“Don’t you have some day job you should be at?”

“I already fulfilled my sales targets for the month, and more,” Gus informed him primly. 

“Well, just go- somewhere.”

“Fine. I am going on a snack run. Shawn, would you like anything?”

“Cheetos. And popcorn. And more of those weird little snake things you got last time.”

“You did _not_ eat all of my Señor Sajita’s Sweet ‘n’ Spicy Serpents.”

“Hey, they didn’t have your name on them.”

“They literally did. I put a sticky note on them saying ‘Property Of Gus’.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t see your name on them.”

“Spencer!”

“Yeah, okay. Just get more serpents?”

“Fine, but you can’t eat them all this time.”

“Scout’s honour.”

“Ha!” Gus exclaimed in indignant response to that, picking up his wallet from his own desk.

Shawn turned back to Lassie. “What’d’ya want, pardner?”

Lassie glared mildly at him and waited until Gus had shut the front door behind him to mumble, “isinkikeen.”

“What?” 

“I think I like men!”

Shawn stuffed a corn chip into his mouth and swallowed it before saying, “Yeah, I know.”

“That’s your reaction?”

“I’ve known you for what, like, five years, Lassie. And I’m psychic, remember. This does not come as a surprise to me.”

“Well, it came as a surprise to me!”

“Anyway, why did you pick me to come out to? Seems out of character.”

“You’re... like that.”

Shawn pitched his voice low and booming, like if a sports announcer was suddenly hired to narrate a horror movie. “A homosexual?”

Lassie glared at him again and he switched back to his normal voice. “I’m not, you know.”

“No, I know.”

“Ah.” Back to horror-sports narrator, with a little extra vibrato this time. “A bisexual?”

The glare remained fixed in place. 

“Aren’t your moms gay? Couldn’t you go to them? Also, you realise you’re going have to stop referring to queers at large as ‘them’ now that you’ve figured out you’re one of us.”

“They’d be unbearably smug about it,” Lassie grumbled, ignoring the second half of Shawn’s statement entirely. 

“And you thought I wouldn’t be?”

“I- I don’t know what I thought. This was a stupid idea.” Lassie turned on his heel, and Shawn leapt out to insert himself between Lassie and the door. 

“No, wait, I’m sorry,” he said. “I- well, I don’t remember having a sexuality crisis, really. I think I mostly realised I was bi as a sort of tween rebellion against Dad. Which didn’t work out, since his response was to say ‘that checks out’ and then never mention it again.”

“Are you gravitating near a point any time soon, Spencer?”

Shawn waved the hand not holding the corn chip bag. “The point is, I do want to help you. Come back inside?”

“Fine.”

Lassie followed Shawn back inside, cast a doubtful eye at the couch, and elected to pull Gus’s chair out and sit on it. Shawn half-perched on the edge of his desk, legs swinging. 

“...You really knew?” Lassie asked finally. 

“I didn’t even need my psychic powers. For one, you clearly had a raging crush on Jules’ brother. Also, on me when we first met.”

“I did not!”

“Don’t be like that. I had one on you too, if it makes you feel better.”

Lassie looked like he’d just been presented with an unsolvable Rubik’s Cube and told he had five minutes to solve it. “What?”

“Who could resist that grumpy little baby face?” Shawn said, waving a hand at said face, which promptly got even grumpier. “Don’t worry, I got over it. Mostly. Corn chip?” he offered, extending the bag.

“No. And no. I might be straight again now.”

Shawn laughed. “We’re here to help. Usually my ability to change people’s sexualities goes the other way, though.”

“I’m rapidly forgetting why I thought it was a good idea to talk to you, Spencer.”

“Good, you’re feeling normal, then. Why _did_ you think it was a good idea to talk to me? Obviously it’s always advisable, but it’s usually inadvisable.”

Sighing, Lassie asked, “How did you know?”

“I got a crush on Benny Isco, head of the chess club. Which was obviously incredibly embarrassing, because he was _the head of the chess club_. But when Gus found out about it, he pointed out that there was another reason it was unexpected. That might not work for you, though, unless the SBPD has a chess club I didn’t know about.”

Lassie massaged his temples, attempting to talk himself out of a psychic-induced tension headache.

“I can take you to the gay bar down the street, if you want,” Shawn continued merrily. “Enrico who bartends on Thursday nights will love you, you’ve got that whole silver-fox thing going that he’s into.”

“I do not want to go to a gay bar, Spencer.”

He shrugged. “Just a suggestion.”

Lassie, luckily, was saved from whatever nonsense he was about to get himself into by Gus pushing the door open and wandering in.

“What’s going on?” Gus asked, dropping the Cheetos on Shawn’s desk.

“Lassie’s gay.”

“I did not say that!”

“Lassie’s bi?”

He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. 

“Lassie’s decided he likes eggplant. He’s wearing the ol’ green carnation. He’s found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

“Spencer!”

Shawn shrugged. “Lassie’s queer.”

“What’s news?”

“ _Guster_ knew?” Lassie wailed.

“I have impeccable straight-dar,” Gus informed him. “It didn’t ping at all around you.”

“You’re both freaks, you know that?”

“Yep,” Shawn agreed.

“Okay. I’m leaving now,” Lassie said, and promptly followed through, getting up and walking into the outer office. Even though he hadn’t seen him moving, Shawn somehow managed to intercept him there, slipping between him and the door.

“Hey, Lassie, you’re good? I know we all knew, but honestly, if there’s anything else I can do to help with _you_ knowing…”

Lassie nodded. “I’m fine, Spencer.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So I _was_ helpful.”

“I never said that.”

“But you meant it!”

Shawn moved out of the way of the door, letting Lassie open it. He walked out into the street to the sound of Shawn exclaiming, “Gus, you didn’t get the serpents!”

“Oh, I got them. You just don’t get to know where they are,” Gus replied, and Lassie laughed as the door swung shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shawn and Gus are having an incredibly convoluted and meaningless argument over Han Shot First


	8. That Little Farm (Where Every Wish Comes True)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fandom: MASH  
> Ship/s: mild BJ/Peg/Hawkeye  
> Title from: 'Christmas Tree Farm' by Taylor Swift

The O’Reilly farm, technically, objectively, was pretty small, Hawkeye knew. Still, it _looked_ impressive, the farmhouse in front built as if several houses, decreasing in size, had been plunked on top of each other and then iced with a layer of terracotta paint, and the farmlands themselves sprawling out behind it. A sheep eyed their car suspiciously from a distance and Hawkeye had to restrain himself from poking his tongue out at it. A glance to his side, at Peg, and then behind him, at BJ and Erin, confirmed that Erin was asleep but that BJ and Peg had both been similiarly affected by first sight of the farm. Actually, probably more so – at least Hawkeye had been on farms before, even if it had been a while. His dad had taken him out to the Peterson farm plenty as a kid, because Old Man Peterson (who’d actually only been about 50) had had a heart condition and he’d been the closest doctor willing to make the trek out. Hawkeye wasn’t sure either of his born-and-bred suburban Californian spouses had even seen a farm in real life before now, even if he had firsthand knowledge that BJ had at least dealt with farm _animals_ before. The sight had distracted him long enough, though, to finally stop complaining that his legs were too long for the backseat, which he’d been doing almost the whole day, despite the fact that they’d agreed from the start that they were going to rotate positions for the three days driving here, and it was BJ’s turn in the backseat. Neither Hawkeye nor Peg had, apparently, been able to make a convincing enough argument to get him to shut up about it, but the farm had.

Peg pulled into the driveway and stopped the car. The sheep looked even more suspicious now that they’d gotten closer. Like a little woolly Frank Burns.

“Hawkeye, stop staring at the sheep, you’re going to give it a complex,” BJ said.

“It was staring at me first!” Hawkeye protested.

Peg collected herself, taking her hands off the wheel and turning to say, “Both of you stop staring at the sheep. Hawkeye, go knock on the door, BJ and I will get the bags and wake Erin up.”

BJ scrambled out of the backseat and opened the driver door for Peg, asking, “Why am I volunteered for the heavy work?”

“Because Hawkeye is more recognisable,” Peg explained, taking his hand to get out, and dropping a kiss onto his shoulder.

“Hey,” BJ objected, waving a hand up and down his lanky frame and ending at the moustache that Hawkeye and Peg still hadn’t managed to shave off in the middle of the night.

“Hm,” Peg replied, gesturing to Hawkeye, who’d gotten out of the other side of the car, and folded his arms on the top, grinning at them.

“Okay, fair enough,” BJ ceded.

Hawkeye could feel the sheep’s eyes on his back as he walked towards the farmhouse, but also Peg’s, so he didn’t detour to confront it. A brief knock on the door promptly produced a short older woman, wiping her hands on an apron which looked like it spent its life dealing with significantly worse substances than just flour and sugar.

“Mrs. O’Reilly!” Hawkeye exclaimed. “I’d recognise that face anywhere.”

“Hawkeye Pierce?” she asked, in a raspy but surprisingly melodic voice. She raised one hand as if to shake his, then glanced at it and thought better of it. It only seemed to be marmalade on them, but Hawkeye supposed that was still the sort of thing you shouldn’t be shaking hands with.

“The one and only,” Hawkeye agreed. “Your farm is lovely. Although I don’t think that sheep likes me.”

She leant out of the doorway to see where Hawkeye was pointing, then chuckled. “Don’t worry, that’s Ferret Face. Walter named him, he doesn’t like anyone.”

Hawkeye threw back his head, clutching a hand to his chest as he laughed. He _knew_ it had looked like Frank.

“Walter!” Mrs. O’Reilly called back into the house over Hawkeye’s laughter. “Your guests are here!”

“Coming, Ma!” called back a very familiar voice, just as BJ and Peg came up the path behind Hawkeye.

“BJ and Peg Hunnicutt, yes?” Mrs. O’Reilly confirmed, waving slightly in lieu of shaking hands.

“That’s us,” Peg agreed.

“I’m Edna O’Reilly. You can call me Edna.”

“Ma, I left Jimmy stirring the marmalade, I don’t know if…”

“Oh, dear,” Edna exclaimed, and disappeared down the corridor, revealing her son behind her.

“Hi, Hawkeye, BJ, Peg.”

“Radar!” Hawkeye opened his arms wide, and Radar squinted at him but walked closer, allowing himself to be hugged. There was a thud behind them as BJ dropped the bags he was carrying and ran forward to join in the hug before Radar squirmed out. He was smiling, though, and he waved at Peg over their shoulders. Hawkeye turned around to see her, which luckily moved him out of the way just in time for Erin to barrel past, heading straight for Radar’s legs.

“Oof!” he said, stumbling back comically, making her laugh up at him. “Hi, Erin.”

“Uncle ‘alter!” she exclaimed, hugging him as he picked her up. “Big,” she continued, spreading her arms to indicate the farm.

“Pretty big,” Radar agreed. “But there’s quite a lot of us here, and all the animals.”

“Animals?” she asked, eyes lighting up. “Horses?”

“Two horses.”

“Horses!”

“We saw some horses on the way down,” BJ explained. “She was very taken.”

“I’ll introduce you to the horses this afternoon,” Radar promised Erin, then looked back at the adults. “Oh, come inside,” he said, and led the way in.

Despite how clean it was, this was absolutely not a house that anyone could ever mistake for being uninhabited, and not only because of the tinsel scattered everywhere and the squeals and discussion and clattering coming from rooms all around.

“Everyone’s here for Christmas,” Radar explained. “Uncle Pat’s family, Cousin Clara’s, Cousin Corey’s. It’s a lot of people. A lot of kids. We’ve got all the rooms full now, except yours. I’m happy you could come.”

This had led them to the kitchen, where Edna had detached a middling-sized child of nondescript gender, their entire face smothered under sugar, marmalade, and probably various other biotoxic substances – presumably Jimmy – from the stove and was peering inside a pot. Radar waved at Jimmy, who grinned and gave him a very enthusiastic thumbs-up before noticing the marmalade on said hands and raising them to lick it off. Jimmy thus occupied, Radar took them on a hard left down another corridor, leading them past various open rooms, one of which contained a couple of couches occupied by O’Reilly family members and a large Christmas tree with presents piled underneath.

Their room was apparently at the end of the corridor. Radar opened the door, revealing a king bed and a couple of mismatched and probably hastily installed tables for them to put their suitcases in the absence of a chest of drawers. He put Erin down as the three of them ducked past him into the room, then stood slightly awkwardly in the doorway. Which was sort of reassuring – he was so much more comfortable and easy in his home, which was wonderful to see, but it was nice knowing that he still had the awkward-Radar stance in him, not just the comfortable-Walter one.

“I’ll let you unpack,” he said, but didn’t actually make a move to go.

“Hey, Radar,” BJ said. “It’s great to see you.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye agreed. “And I’m sure you’re going to lay on a better Christmas than we could ever manage by ourselves. Oh, and I’ve already encountered Ferret Face, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

He grinned, suddenly and brightly. “You know I wouldn’t normally insult an animal like that, but doesn’t he look like Major Burns?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

BJ frowned at Hawkeye, who waved a hand at him. “The sheep.”

“Oh, that is mean,” Peg said.

“You haven’t met Ferret Face,” Radar said.

“Either incarnation, and I’m happy to keep it that way.”

Still grinning, Radar waved at them and turned to go, immediately being caught by a teenage girl saying something hurried about Aunt Jackie and a chicken. Unless Aunt Jackie was the chicken, it was a little unclear. In any case, he followed her to help with the chicken situation, and Hawkeye turned back to BJ and Peg.

Erin had clambered onto the bed, watching them. As they moved together, they also moved closer to the bed. When Hawkeye leant forward to kiss them, he felt a determined tap on his side, and looked over at wide and equally determined green eyes.

“Horses,” Erin demanded, pointing at the suitcases in a clear request to hurry it up. “Uncle ‘Alter’s horses.”


	9. Throw Blankets Over My Barbed Wire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did I not promise Eliot POV? this is essentially. h/c without the h
> 
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Ship/s: Parker/Eliot/Hardison  
> Title from: 'Tolerate It' by Taylor Swift and yes I'm outing myself as a tswift stan by using a lyric from an album that dropped today and yes it's one where the entire song doesn't actually fit but I couldn't resist the lyric. also can we talk about thiefsome and cowboy like me? can we? please? boots under my bed forever is the sweetest con???

After the third time that night that one of the others shifts and Eliot’s woken up startled and ready to fight, he gives up and slides out of the bed, grateful that he’s at the door side tonight rather than in the middle of the two of them. Not that that’s a coincidence – the job had left them all a little on edge, which meant he was on the door side because it put him between his partners and anyone who might try and bust in to get to them, Parker was on the window side so that she could get out of the room easily, and Hardison was in the middle because he didn’t get to feeling trapped the way Parker and Eliot did, and it made him feel safe. Eliot grabs his shirt off the dresser and pads out as quietly as he can, which is pretty damn quietly.

He wanders aimlessly around the apartment for a few minutes, just working out the jitters, then decides that anything he can do in the kitchen will make too much noise - including the kettle, even though he’d die for a cup of that weird Chinese tea he can never get the name of right, that Hardison figured out how to import after he’d mentioned it being the only thing that ever effectively pulled him down off of adrenaline hits. How he managed it, Eliot has no idea, seeing as how Eliot had originally been given it by a near-100 year old man who lived in a tiny village with no internet access up the side of one of the Lingshuan Yi mountains, but he's learnt not to ask Hardison about shit like that. So he goes into the living room, and he perches on the back of the couch facing the staircase like he’s Parker or something, because his body won’t let him actually just sit down. 

He always startles slightly when they roll against him while he’s asleep, because he always startles when _anyone_ rolls against him while he’s asleep. He knows that because he had slept with people after the military but before them, obviously. He wasn’t mean enough to kick his one-night stands out before the morning, and he’d even had a few people who’d rate - well, maybe not ‘girlfriend’ or ‘boyfriend’, really, even if he does toss those terms around, but he’d had people who’d stuck around long enough for them to sleep multiple nights in his bed and him in theirs. Before Parker and Hardison, though, no-one had ever noticed him jumping when they moved. Or at least, never mentioned it. Which is nice, in a way, that they notice, but it also means that he can’t just live with it and let it happen, because then they get hurt and worried. Not so much at the normal, little ones anymore – not since he got frustrated and pointed out that he had the choice of either sleeping by himself and not waking up, or sleeping with them, and he’d chosen the latter, so they needed to stop worrying about him. He slept deeper with them there, anyway, even if it was slightly more interrupted. When it got like tonight, though, when he’s not just starting but actually waking up ready to fight, not only is it no longer worth trying to sleep, but he might actually wake them up by it, which makes the whole thing completely impossible. 

He should go to his own bedroom and try and sleep again – that’s half the reason it’s there, for nights like this. But the only reason he’d been able to sleep at all up there was knowing there was no way anyone could get to Parker and Hardison without going through him. The own-bedroom thing really only works when he’s strung up for no reason, when he’s just reacting to bodies-near-him as attackers instead of reacting to Parker-and-Hardison-moving as them maybe being in danger. He briefly considers the possibility of going into Parker’s bedroom, on the theory that maybe it smelling like her will be enough to trick his brain into thinking they’re both there, but discards it both because his brain’s not that suggestible and, more importantly, because Parker might not like him having been in her space. 

He must’ve not been as quiet as he thought, anyway, because he’s pretty sure he’s only been downstairs maybe ten minutes before Hardison’s footsteps come tapping down the stairs. Or maybe Hardison didn’t hear him, maybe his left side just got cold. In any case, Hardison appears at the doorway, and blinks blearily at Eliot. He’s wearing boxers and a way too big for him t-shirt with an Iron Man graphic, which slips off one shoulder when he raises his arms to rub at his eyes, making Iron Man wink lopsidedly at Eliot. “Hey, El,” Hardison murmurs, voice dropping off before he can finish Eliot’s name. Or at least, Eliot’s gonna give him the benefit of the doubt that that’s what happened rather than Hardison trying to nickname him. He sorta stumbles over, not stopping until he’s standing between Eliot’s legs, leaning half on the couch back and half on Eliot, dropping his head down on top of Eliot’s. “You okay?” he mumbles into Eliot’s bed-tangled hair, then makes a ‘blergh’ noise and turns his head to the side, spitting out strands of hair. Eliot laughs and drops his arms around Hardison’s waist.

“Yeah. Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Mmm. Not-” He raises one arm and Eliot feels him gesturing vaguely in the direction of Eliot’s bedroom.

“No.”

“Okay.” He recovers the power of speech enough to continue, “Can we sit on the couch before I fall over, or is this some kinda warning vigil thing?”

“Yeah.” Eliot swings his legs around, dropping onto the couch seat. Hardison watches him, then walks around, shaking his head.

“Tell me how I ended up with two people who refuse to just walk places like a normal person,” he says, sitting down between Eliot and the sofa arm.

Eliot puts an arm around him and pulls his head down onto Eliot’s shoulder, which takes very little convincing. “It was the only option to accommodate the weird-ass shit you like in bed.”

“Hey, I never _asked_ you and Parker to start doing that stuff,” he objects sleepily. “Parker has ideas, you just gotta go along with them.”

“Yeah, you looked real put-upon.”

“They’re usually _good_ ideas.”

Eliot can’t argue with that. At least, when they’re not physically impossible for anyone who’s not Parker. “She still asleep?” he asks instead.

“She was when I left.”

Usually, Parker either sleeps like the dead or so lightly it doesn’t really seem like she’s sleeping at all, just closing her eyes. Since the three of them started sleeping (mostly) in the same bed, it’s been the former more often than not, which Eliot takes as something good, something to be proud of. Apparently not tonight, though, because he can feel something moving behind him, and the style is familiar enough that he doesn’t tense up. She’s already – he cocks his head, listening – at the living room doorway. He grins, because if it took him that long to notice her, Hardison definitely ain’t gonna at all.

She’s standing directly behind the couch before she complains, “The bed got empty.” Sure enough, Eliot feels Hardison’s chest jump in surprise, then fall as he exhales sharply. 

“God, Parker,” he says, and his tone is mostly just surprise and half-relief, but there’s an edge of admonishment in it too. “Eliot’s still all jittery, you can’t just go sneaking up,” he continues, explaining the admonishment. 

“S’fine,” Eliot tells him. “I heard her at the doorway.”

“Because I meant him to hear me at the doorway,” Parker adds, in her ‘duh, obviously’ voice. Eliot would be offended if he didn’t know first-hand that, at least when he was distracted like this, she could sneak up on him when she really wanted to – she just never wanted to. He pats the couch beside him with one hand, and she vaults over the back and lands neatly next to him. She brushes a hand against his shoulder and seems to consider for a moment, then curls against him, letting him slip his free arm around her. The both of them are leaning on him now, comforting, heavy weights on either side, and the advantage of being on the couch, where he can just leap up if needed, is that he doesn’t feel hemmed in, just pinned down and grounded. He’s never actually told either of them that this helps, that sometimes what he needs is their warm weights pressing against him and telling his body that they’re safe and his brain that it’s where it belongs. He always feels connected to his body when he fights, but other times, especially in this state where his body is prepping for a fight his brain knows isn’t going to come, he has a tendency to float away, disconnect. This, them, it tells him he’s real even when he’s not fighting. He’s never said it to them, and he doesn’t know whether they figured it out themselves or whether they all just slot together so perfectly that what they do naturally happened to be exactly what he needed. He’s not sure which explanation he’d prefer. 

There’s a tug at his hair, and when he looks to his left, Parker has a handful of it and is looking questioningly up at him. When he shrugs - as much as he can with Hardison on his other shoulder - she nods and begins to separate strands, lightly finger-combing it out of the tangle it had developed into in bed. The movements send light echoes of her touch up and through his body, and he rests his head back against the couch and lets her work. 

“What’re we doing?” Hardison asks sleepily, obviously having felt them moving through Eliot. 

“Braiding Eliot’s hair,” Parker replies. “To make him sleepy.”

“Oh, braiding, I can do that,” Hardison says, and laces his fingers through the other side of Eliot’s hair. 

“You don’t have to...” Eliot starts, a little uncomfortable now that it’s been expressed in words, rather than Parker just doing it because she wanted to do it and he said she could. 

“Shut up, honey,” Hardison requests, so he does, and lets the discomfort dissolve away under thief hands and hacker hands, both equally nimble. He can actually feel the adrenaline in his body getting up, looking around shamefacedly, realising it’s in the wrong place, and shuffling away. 

At some point, Parker leans up behind him to look at Hardison’s side, then transfers the strands she’s working on to one hand in order to wave the other one at Hardison’s distinctly unplaitable buzz-cut and ask, “Where did you learn to do this? Yours are fancier than mine,” in a vaguely offended tone. 

“Growing up. Between Nana and foster sisters, I was in high demand. I mean, Nana’s hair is a bit different, but there were some white kids came through, so I learnt to deal with that too.”

Eliot feels like he should take some kind of offence at the mild derision in Hardison’s voice, but he’s rapidly getting too relaxed to bother. Anyway, Parker hums in acknowledgement and resumes braiding. His hair is going to look absolutely ridiculous in the morning, but he can’t bring himself to care, not with both Parker and Hardison also obviously getting sleepier, their movements slowing and weight increasing. When Parker drops a strand and mutters, “Oops,” Eliot reaches up and detaches her hands, then Hardison’s. Parker hums comfortably and curls further into him, resting her head on his chest. Hardison drops his hands onto Eliot’s thigh and immediately nods off against his shoulder. Sighing, Eliot crosses his legs and lets his head fall back, slipping sideways slightly to rest on top of Hardison’s. His knees and his neck and probably twenty other body parts are going to kill him in the morning, but it’s worth it just to sleep like this.


	10. every two-bit flea-bit roadside bedsit, it could be the Ritz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aight I know I said I'd be caught up by today and I'm not, but I really will get caught up tomorrow. Anyway, have a fluffy little nothing Christmas piece, set somewhere between s8 and s12
> 
> Fandom: Supernatural  
> Ship/s: Dean/Cas  
> Title from: 'Frankie Baby' by Mo'Ju

“Really, man, Krampus?” Dean complained, throwing his knife onto the hotel table to be cleaned later. Sam, walking in behind him, huffed out a breath and picked it up, waving it at Dean until he took it back resignedly. Cas ducked in last, avoiding the knife-waving without looking, instead peering at the white blood on his trenchcoat (yeah, apparently Krampus bled white), then sighing and shrugging it off, hanging it on the back of one of the crappy wire chairs around the table, presumably until he could summon the energy to either clean it himself or get it laundered. Dean spun the knife absentmindedly, then gestured towards the bathroom. “Bags first shower. Unless Cas wants to join me,” he added, waggling his eyebrows.

Cas cast a distracted look at him, taking in the Krampus blood and guts coating his clothes and, he could feel, stuck in his hair, and replied, “No, thank you.”

“Yeah, that’s fair, I wouldn’t want to either,” Dean agreed.

“Didn’t Bobby once tell us Krampus wasn’t real?” Sam asked, pulling out one of the wire chairs and dropping onto the edge of it, wary of transferring the blood on his own clothes.

“Cas can tell him he was wrong next time he’s in heaven.”

“I’m not your messenger boy,” Cas pointed out drily.

“We’ll give you a note,” Dean said, then waved and disappeared into the bathroom.

The flannel he was wearing was completely wrecked, he realised, looking at himself in the mirror as he rinsed off the knife. He’d _liked_ this flannel. Oh well, they were a renewable resource in the Winchester household. Stripping off, he dumped his clothes in a pile on the tiled floor and climbed into the shower, fiddling with the taps. When he finally got it going and at a temperature somewhere between fire and ice, it turned out to be a pretty good shower. It wasn’t going to win any awards, but it was warm and he could feel the water hitting his sore shoulders with alright pressure, which was more than he’d expected from this particular five-cent hovel of a hotel.

The last time Dean had thought he might be fighting Krampus, he reflected as he squeezed the little hotel shampoo out and scrubbed at his hair – the time that Bobby had told them he didn’t exist – he’d been convinced it was his last Christmas before going to hell. Well, technically, it had been his last Christmas before going to hell, it’s just that the goof in the next room had pulled him out and promptly scared the hell out of him. Literally, he supposed. He could currently hear, over the sound of the water, said goof asking Sam something in a confused voice, and he could perfectly picture the slight befuddlement on his face that went with that tone. Sparking bulbs in an empty barn seemed like it was a million years ago, being terrified of him two million.

His hair had loosened up, and the water had stopped swirling red with what must have been blood from one of them, even though he hadn’t realised anyone had bled on him, so he dropped his arms and just stood under the water for a minute, watching it hit the discoloured tiles and jump up slightly before falling down the drain. Sam definitely hadn’t bled on him, he’d been watching him the whole time, and – he patted over his own body, checking – he didn’t seem to have sustained anything worse than a few light scratches and bruises. He’d had worse from rough nights of sex. Which meant it had to have been Cas. Dean cast his mind back and remembered Cas leaning on him as they left, which he’d assumed was just Cas’s usual tendency to push up against him after a hunt, but that must’ve been when he got the blood on him. He turned the shower off and shook himself, watching droplets scatter on the tiles, then wrapped a towel around himself and pushed the bathroom door open. “Cas, c’mere, are you- what are you two doing?”

They both glanced up slightly guiltily from the table, where sometime between Dean going into the bathroom and now, a pile of things roughly wrapped in dime-store reindeer print wrapping paper had appeared.

“I figured we wouldn’t be back from this hunt before Christmas, so I brought our presents,” Sam explained.

“Aw, dude, I didn’t bring yours.”

“I did,” Cas said. “And I showed Sam where you were keeping mine.”

“Hey, you’re not supposed to know where I keep yours!”

Cas raised his eyebrows at him, and Dean shrugged, then remembered why he’d come out in the first place. “Hey, Cas. Did you get hurt?”

“Not badly.”

Sam glanced at him, frowning worriedly. “I didn’t think you’d gotten hurt at all. You okay?”

Cas waved a hand. “Yes, I’m fine. He just scratched me a little.”

“Enough that you were bleeding,” Dean pointed out. “C’mere, I’ll check it.”

Cas opened his mouth as if to protest again, then must have caught the steely glint in Dean’s eyes, because he sighed and shut it again and walked over. Dean tugged him inside, shutting the bathroom door behind them, and had unbuttoned Cas’s shirt before he could protest. He peeled it off cautiously, revealing a large patch of blood on his side. When Dean smoothed his fingers over it, though, the skin underneath felt unmarred. Dean looked up at Cas, who was watching him attentively. Cas tilted his head to the side. “I healed it.”

Dean shoved him lightly. “Well, you could have _told_ me that, idiot.”

“Mm,” Cas hummed, pushing his pants down and heading to the shower. “But then you wouldn’t have left the shower free.”

Dean shook his head. “Manipulative angel.”

“Yes,” Cas agreed, and ducked under the water. Chuckling, Dean padded back out, heading to his suitcase and pulling out new clothes. Sammy was fussing with something else on the table, but exclaimed, “Dean!” and turned his back when Dean dropped the towel to pull the clothes on.

“We’ve bathed together,” Dean pointed out.

“Yeah, when I was _three_.”

“Still, nothing you haven’t seen before. Anyway, I’m decent now, you can turn around again,” Dean said, buttoning up his shirt.

Having apparently done the lightning-fast wash that he sometimes did, Cas re-emerged from the bathroom, wearing his pants, which had escaped the wrath of the Krampus, and his shirt, which hadn’t entirely and was hanging open. His hair was sticking up all over his head, and Dean reached up, laughing, as Sam ducked past for the shower. “You look like a cockatoo,” Dean informed him, patting it down.

“So do you,” Cas returned, and Dean immediately moved his hands to his own head, making Cas smile at him.

“Oh, shut up,” Dean said, and Cas agreeably leant in to kiss him. Which hadn’t exactly been what Dean had meant, but he was hardly going to say no. When Cas leant back, Dean finally caught another glance at the table and laughed. Where he’d got it, Dean had no idea, unless he’d brought it from the bunker as well, but Sam had wrapped tinsel all around the pile of presents. “Sammy’s gone all out on the crappy hotel Christmas, huh?”

“He didn’t want to miss out on it.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Work-life balance.”

“Something like that, I believe.”

Dean grinned and pulled Cas closer, slinging an arm around his shoulders. The noise of the shower shut off once again, and a few moments later Sam, who was the only one of them to have had the good sense to take clean clothes into the bathroom, came out wearing a fresh flannel and his pyjama sweatpants.

“Love the Christmas setup, Sammy,” Dean said over Cas’s shoulder, and Sam smiled at him.

“There’s eggnog in the fridge,” he said.

“Oooh.” Dean let go of Cas, who nevertheless followed him over to the minifridge and collected the two glasses which the motel room provided, casting a doubtful glance at them and then taking them into the bathroom to rinse. Dean pulled the carton of eggnog out and placed it on the table next to the presents, sitting down in front of it.

Sam claimed the chair next to him, and when Cas came back out, he put the glasses down in front of Dean to pour and took the last chair.

“I know it’s not exactly home,” Sam said, waving a hand around them. “But I figured we could do Christmas anyway.”

Passing the glasses to Sam and Cas and keeping the carton for himself, Dean looked around at the room, then back at his brother and his angel, both freshly scrubbed, glowing with the knowledge of a hunt well completed, and smiling at him over tacky, shiny Christmas paper. “I reckon it’s exactly like home,” he said, and raised his eggnog carton. Sam and Cas followed suit with their glasses, all three clinking together in a toast over the top of the present pile.


	11. Now That We Know It, Let's Really Show It, Darling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Me, posting only one chapter today: yes perhaps I am booboo the fool. anyway.
> 
> I guess this is set at the end of season 10, either pre-Aloha or Aloha-divergent? Just since it references 10x19 as being at least three months earlier but they're all just working a case like normal.
> 
> Fandom: Hawaii Five-0  
> Ship/s: Steve/Danny  
> Slightly ironic title from: 'Something To Talk About' by Bonnie Raitt

“Alright, Lou, you go talk with the daughter,” Steve said, gesturing at the screen. “Junior and I will check out the docks, on the off-chance Mr. Taciturn Foreman is more willing to talk to sailors. Tani, Danny, that leaves you to go through the records Duke pulled.”

“Can’t I call in Quinn and Adam and foist it off on the underlings?” Danny grumbled.

“No.” Steve leant across the table to kiss the grumpy frown off Danny’s lips, then turned to lead Junior out. He was almost out the doors when he realised that Junior wasn’t actually behind him and turned around. Danny was messing with something on the table screen, but the other three were staring blankly at the both of them.

“What?”

“Uh. Boss,” Junior replied. When nothing further seemed to be coming, Steve nodded.

“That’s me,” he agreed. “What?”

“You…” Tani chipped in, and waved a hand between him and Danny. Danny finally looked up at that, glancing at Steve, who just stared back in befuddlement.

“…Yeah?” Danny said. “We?”

Grover raised a hand in the air, palm flat out. “You just planted a big wet one on Danny and then started to leave like it was nothing, Steve.”

“Did- did-” Steve recovered enough breath from the laughter strongly attempting to burst out of him to get out, “Did you guys not _know_?”

“No, we didn’t know!” Tani exclaimed.

“I _live_ with you guys and I didn’t know!” Junior added. “How long?”

“Months, dude,” Danny said.

“Three months and one week,” Steve specified. “How did you not-?”

“You haven’t been acting any different!”

“I have known y’all for six years and you have done _nothing_ unexpected until two minutes ago,” Grover said.

Danny glanced at Steve and shrugged. “Grace did tell us we should have figured it out years ago.”

“Hey, am I the one who never shuts up and still managed not to say anything for ten years? No I am not.”

Danny laid an offended hand on his own chest. “Am _I_ the one who started to give a romantic speech at the top of a hill at sunset and then wimped out on it? No, I am not.”

“I did not wimp out on it, you started raving about squirrels!”

“I started _rationally talking_ about squirrels, thank you very much, because you were veering awfully close to what sounded like contemplating your imminent death, and I don’t like to think about such things, what with the loving you and all.”

Before Steve could reply, Lou cut in, “See, that sounds exactly like something I could’ve heard you say three years ago.”

“I _live_ with you,” Junior repeated, apparently still stuck on that point.

“We have been sleeping in the same bedroom, buddy,” Danny pointed out.

He goldfished for a second, mouth forming a perfect ‘o’, then collapsed onto the table with his head in his arms. “Oh my god, I know, I just didn’t process it as weird.”

“You didn’t _process_ it as _weird_?” Tani exclaimed, slapping him on the arm.

“I knoooow. In my defence, it’s _them_ ,” he said, waving one hand vaguely in their direction.

“That seems like a decent defence to me,” Grover said. “Y’all did sort of do the Married With Children thing in reverse. First comes baby in a baby carriage, then comes marriage, then comes love.”

“Hey, we said ‘I love you’ years ago,” Steve objected.

“You’re not helping our case here, normal relationship progression-wise,” Danny said.

“When were we ever going to have a normal relationship?”

“Boy’s got a point,” Grover said. “Wait! _Your_ boy’s got a point.”

“You’ve been calling him that for years. Chin did before you.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got renewed vigour behind it now. And maybe you should have listened to me earlier, huh?”

“I am not going to have you taking credit for my incentive,” Danny retorted.

“My incentive,” Steve corrected.

“Nuh-uh, points go to who said it first, not who kissed first.”

“You weren’t saying anything, we would’ve walked out of there exactly the same as ever if I hadn’t done something.”

“I was _winding up_ to a _point_. You don’t just leap into telling your best friend of ten years that you’re in love with them. You’ve gotta approach it with a certain amount of finesse. Or at least, you’re supposed to, but of course, you and finesse wouldn’t know each other if it was hitting you in the face. Or more likely, if you were hitting it in the face.”

Grinning, Steve returned, “And aren’t you glad?”

“Just because it served you well this time is no excuse, Steven. Next time you up and kiss someone in the middle of a planned speech, it might not go so well.”

“Mm. Good thing for me that I’m not planning to kiss anyone else ever again.”

“I-” Danny shook a finger at him, ignoring the smile on his own face. “Sweet nothings don’t get you out of these spots any more effectively now than they did before.”

“Hey, they’re not sweet nothings. They’re definitely sweet somethings.”

Tani made some hastily smothered noise, and Steve looked back at the rest of the team. Grover was watching them with a mix of smugness and amusement; Junior still looked slightly dumbfounded, but most of it had been replaced with baffled fondness; and Tani just looked like someone had opened up a whole new well of mockery material in front of her. Which Steve supposed they sort of had.

“Weren’t we all supposed to be working?” he said as sternly as he could muster, which he had to admit wasn’t terribly stern at the worst of times, let alone right now. “You two have documents to read,” he added, pointing between Tani and Danny, both of whose faces instantly collapsed into sulks. Tani brightened up a second later, though, and nudged Junior in the side before pointing to Steve.

“No, I’m not interrogating him for you,” Junior said. “I love you, but may I once again remind you that I live in Steve’s house, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Looks like you’re gonna have to do your own footwork there,” Grover said, heading to his office before he left. “Me, I’m happy not knowin’ any more detail than I do right now.”

“Oh, but the teasing potential…” Tani said wistfully, placing a hand on Junior’s arm and staring into the middle distance.

“Okay, we’re going now,” Junior said hastily, slipping out and grabbing Steve’s arm.

Steve waved back over his shoulder at the once again downcast Danny as they left. “Love you!” he called.

“See, you both said that all the time already,” Junior said. “I was completely justified not being able to tell.”

“Same bed.”

Junior sighed. “I’m standing by the defence that it seems like something you two would’ve just started doing.”


	12. Breathing In, Breathing Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So there's an inconsistency in the Phryne Fisher canon regarding Bert and Cec's time in the Great War: Murder in Montparnasse, as an integral part of the plot, has that they were discharged when the war ended and went to Paris with five other guys in their unit, but earlier, The Green Mill Murder had stated that after Bert was shot at Ponzieres (which was two years before the war ended), they were both flown to a London hospital and medically discharged, Bert for his bullet injuries and Cec for soldier's heart. So. I'm using the Green Mill timeline for this, even though technically I suppose the later one should be the accepted canon. ANYWAY. the point of this is that Bert and Cec are the epitome of like, queerplatonic soulmates, and I will fight you on that.
> 
> Fandom: Phryne Fisher (books, although there's no reason you couldn't read it as series I don't think)  
> Ship/s: none - Bert & Cec  
> Title from: 'I Guess I'll Just Lie Here' by Noah Reid

The big guns were hammering in Bert’s ears, shot after shot, bleeding into each other as men bled out around him. Dirt flew up around them with each bang, thickening the air until he had to squint to see, and the damn guns never let up, thundering and deafening and-

With a start, Bert woke, into the near-complete silence of his and Cec’s nice cosy Melbourne flat. The only sound, in fact, was the sleepy snuffling of Cec’s latest stray, a little black-and-white spotted mongrel puppy who’d decided the only acceptable place to sleep was the end of Bert’s bed. When Bert heaved himself up into a sitting position, against the suddenly sharp protests of his knee and chest, it looked up and cocked a hopeful ear at him. The aftershocks of Pozières still ringing in his ears, he relented for the first time and opened his arms, patting the bed in front of him. The mongrel – after the last time Cec had almost cried when it came time to give one of them away, Bert had instituted a strict anti-naming policy, so it was just ‘mongrel’ – leapt to its feet, its stubby tail wagging manically, and ran up the bed. It dived nose-first into Bert’s lap, then turned around twice and plopped down, head resting on his thigh. Scratching behind its ears, Bert exhaled, trying to loosen the tension in his chest that came partly from remembered fear and partly from the old bullet wound aching against his ribs.

At the back of the room, the door creaked open, and Cec emerged from his bedroom. A tabby cat was draped across his shoulders like a fancy lady’s fur, purring into his ear. “You too?” Bert asked, and he nodded.

“Nice seeing the boys again,” Bert said. “But could do without this, eh?”

Cec hummed an agreement, and sat down next to Bert on the bed, dislodging the cat from his shoulders to his lap. It got a sort of pinched, grumpy look at the movement, but settled down again.

“Pozières?”

“Flanders,” Cec answered softly. “I was stuck in the mud.”

Bert shuddered. “Oh, mate, that’s almost worse.”

“No,” Cec replied, as forcefully as Cec ever said anything, and Bert remembered that Cec was the one who’d had to drag what he’d thought was Bert’s corpse out of the fields of Pozières.

“No, well maybe not for you, I suppose. I just had to collapse…” He’d been intending to pull that into a joke, attempt to draw a smile out of Cec, but instead he trailed off into silence, hit with the memory of watching bullets fly towards him in slow motion.

Cec lifted his hand off what Bert realised was his own scar, from the bullet that had torn through Bert’s body straight into Cec’s, and let it fall heavy onto Bert’s arm. Weight and touch was a dangerous thing, always balancing a tripwire over the feeling of dead bodies falling onto you, but tonight the tripwire felt steadier, grounding Bert into their new reality. The one where, Miss Fisher’s little jobs notwithstanding, dead bodies were as far as they could ever be from a worker’s life spent in the poorer and sometimes seedier side of the city. The one where France was on the other side of the world.

He didn’t touch Cec back, not wanting to risk sinking him back into Flanders mud, but he leant to the side slightly, bumping his shoulder in thanks. In his lap, the mongrel made a grumbling noise, disturbed out of the sleep it had fallen back into, and the cat echoed the noise in sympathy.

“Your strays are getting annoyed,” Bert chuckled, and Cec nodded and smoothed a hand over the cat’s fur until it put its head back down.

“They don’t understand,” Cec said, a little unexpectedly. “They’re free from this.”

Bert turned his head to look at Cec. His pale blue gaze was bent down onto the tabby cat’s head, watching his own fingers’ gentle repetitive movements, and the slow rise and fall of the cat’s curled up body underneath. “Yah. That’s partly why you love them so much, eh?”

He looked back up at Bert, soft lines settling across his face. “Partly,” he agreed. “They might attack another creature to get to their food, or to protect their kin, but no animal’s going to go out and make elaborate machines just so they can go kill someone who never did them no harm. It’s not in their nature, and it shouldn’t be in ours. They give me hope in that.”

His verbosity no doubt exhausted by that speech, he lapsed back into silence. Bert nodded, watching him fondly.

Above their heads, a steady patter started against the roof, a rainstorm rolling through. Even though the rain would never make it inside their flat – Mrs. Browning kept a better house than that – it still made something shift inside, pulling out the stifling clouds and replacing them with light air. The sound was too familiar, too close to ammunition, to be comforting, or to allow either of them to go back to sleep, but the feeling was welcome anyway. The mongrel apparently agreed, because it made a pleased little grunt and pushed further down into Bert’s lap. Bert sighed and leant back, letting the faint cold seep through his shirt. Taking his arm back, Cec curled both hands around the cat, letting his fingers sink into the brown-orange fur, and echoed Bert’s movement. Bert wasn’t going to be able to sleep again tonight, but at least the three other breathing bodies, and especially Cec, could keep him away from the war till the morning.


	13. What's Engraved Upon My Heart In Letters Deeply Worn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So maybe my brain is constantly caught halfway between being horny for Eliot and kinning Eliot. Maybe this shows up in my writing.
> 
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Ship/s: Eliot/Parker/Hardison, with a focus towards Eliot/Parker  
> Title from: 'Fair' by The Amazing Devil

“And this one?” Parker asked, tapping a faded white starburst over Eliot’s left hip.

“Afghanistan, ’99. Shrapnel.”

Parker hummed, and continued her search. For months, every time she’d seen Eliot naked or half-naked and noticed a new scar, she’d immediately stopped whatever the both of them were doing to demand the story behind it, which had proved slightly disruptive to, well, life. So Eliot had given in, and agreed to just let her catalogue all of them. Which, with his history, was a lengthy project, but afterwards, maybe he’d be able to exercise without having to tell half his life story.

Despite Eliot being entirely naked on their bed and Parker having been touching him for the last half hour, there was no trace of the… funner sides to that combo, what with Parker’s detached attitude. Less lovers, more scientific observer and test subject. Which, while there was no-one he’d rather be scientifically observed by, he _was_ getting to miss Parker the person by this point. He took one hand out from behind his head, and covered hers where it was skimming his ribs. He held it gently in place there until she looked up at him. Her expression was still in curious, other mode, the way she looked when she’d sort of forgotten that the people around her were actually people, but it only took her a few moments of looking at Eliot’s face for the distance to fade, replaced by a brief and blinding grin.

“Sorry,” she said. “Am I objectifying you again?”

Eliot wasn’t sure which of the others had explained objectification to her, but he had a suspicion it might have been Nate. She was definitely using it in the way she did concepts that Nate had recently told her about. “Not in the usual way that means, but yeah, kinda,” he replied. “It’s okay, just… talk to me.”

She propped herself up on her elbows. “Okay. How did you get this one?” she asked, touching the raised, still-pink mark that she’d been tracing to earlier, but there was warmth in the movement now.

“As I recall, my partner decided it was a great idea to improvise in the middle of a job and got a bunch of guys chasing after her. In a basement filled with steam pipes,” Eliot said drily.

“Oh. I didn’t know you got burnt.”

“Not badly. But it takes a while for those to fade.”

Parker hummed in acknowledgement, then bent her head to inspect his right shoulder, which was littered with material for her – the legacy of being right-handed and using his own body as both shield and weapon was that his right arm bore the brunt of a lot of attacks. Her hair fell over her face, brushing against his bicep, and he leant across, pushing it back behind her ear with his left hand. She smiled, the little half-secret one that was reserved for when Eliot or Hardison did something soft that reminded her– he didn’t know what it was reminding her, really, but there always seemed to be some recalled fact behind it. Sometimes he thought it might just be the implicit reminder of family, but he’d’ve thought Nate or Sophie could have triggered it as well, then. Maybe it was remembering that she had avowedly permanent family – Nate and Sophie would always be family, but they hadn’t made any promise not to physically leave, not like Eliot and Hardison had. Then again, maybe it was just love.

She pinpointed one of the scars running across his triceps and looked up at him questioningly. He winced. “Guy with a knife. ’06. Coming after Moreau.” It had been one of the last weeks he’d spent working for him, had already made up his mind to leave, already grew sick at the sight of the man, but he’d still had to throw himself in front of him when a client unexpectedly lunged at him with a kitchen knife.

Parker placed her hand, palm flat, over his chest, then looked back up at his face and leant down to place a hard, deliberate kiss over the scar. He shook himself out of it and turned his head to smile at her. “It’s alright.”

Footsteps started up from outside the bedroom, and a minute later Hardison bustled in through the open door, finally – he’d been messing around on his laptop the entire evening – wearing a long-sleeved shirt and his solemnly dubbed Cosy pyjama pants. “Eliot, why are you naked, man, aren’t you cold?” he exclaimed, stopping at the foot of the bed.

“Naw.”

“How?”

“I run hot,” Eliot said, smirking, and Hardison, drawn into it, dragged his gaze slowly down Eliot’s body, smirked right back, declared, “I know,” and then disappeared past them into the bathroom.

Parker clapped her hands against Eliot’s chest, laughing, and Eliot grinned down at her in slight bemusement. You could never tell what Parker was going to find hilarious.

“I get it!” she exclaimed. “Because you’re hot, but you’re _hot_ , because it’s hot.”

“Yeah,” Eliot agreed, still grinning.

“Okay, okay.” She stopped laughing, and recovered her breath before tapping Eliot’s cheek, a faint mark under his cheekbone that she already knew the story of because she’d been the one who’d held the icepack to it that time, giggling off and on because it made her fingers go numb. She walked her fingers up the side of his face like she was performing Itsy Bitsy Spider, then ran her fingers over a thin white line that curved under Eliot’s eyebrow. “What about this one?”

Eliot blinked reflexively at the touch as he answered, “I, uh. I fell off a horse.”

Hardison stuck his head out of the bathroom, proving that he’d been listening the entire time, and mumbled around the toothbrush in his mouth, “ _You_ fell off a _horse_?”

“I was five,” Eliot defended.

“Aw,” Parker said, grinning at him, presumably picturing five-year-old Eliot on the back of a horse. Which, damn right, he’d been adorable. Before he fell off and split his head open and started bawling. Even his father had had to admit that the crying was sort of a reasonable reaction to the massive cut bleeding into his eyes. Not that it had been that bad a cut, actually, but head wounds always bled like that. And scarred.

Hardison ducked back in to rinse out his mouth, then came out, kissing Parker on top of her head before slipping under the covers on Eliot’s other side. “What’s up with you and Eliot’s scars, anyway?” he asked Parker. “I mean, I know you like to know things, but it seems like more than that.”

Eliot tilted his head to watch her, curious. He hadn’t bothered asking, because it was Parker, and sometimes she had an answer and sometimes she didn’t, but half the time even when she did it wasn’t one that made any damn sense to Eliot.

“They mean he survived. He healed, and he survived,” Parker answered matter-of-factly, and that– that Eliot got. “It’s like a map of all the things you’ve survived,” she said to Eliot.

He looked down at himself, clocking bullet wounds and knife wounds and every other type of thing that’s hit him in thirty-some years. “Yeah. You two aren’t on there, though. I think I deserve something for surviving you,” Eliot joked.

She tapped the burn mark again, and the one under his cheekbone. “There’s all these ones, that you got protecting us.”

“Ah, but that’s not _surviving_ you.”

Hardison rolled into Eliot, tucking his head on top of Eliot’s like an asshole, because he knew perfectly well that Eliot would never let him do it while they were standing up but he didn’t have enough leverage – ha – to push him off like this. He laid a hand over the left side of Eliot’s chest, and tapped two fingers. “We’re in here.”

“You saying you’ve scarred my heart?”

“Something like that,” Hardison agreed, and Eliot stopped to think about it. Scars were permanent, reminders inextricably twined into his body that would remain there whether or not the sources of them were there or not, a part of him that spoke to who he was without overwhelming it, and he had to admit that sounded an awful lot like Parker and Hardison.

“Maybe,” he admitted, and he could feel Hardison’s smile as he took his hand off, instead reaching down to grasp Eliot’s hand.

Parker dropped off her elbows onto the mattress, shaking it slightly, and poked at a small, round scar on Eliot’s wrist. “What’s this one?” she asked, and Eliot sighed and answered.


	14. Drinking In Your Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I forgot to do Bas's birthday chapter on the 13th, and in penance, I said I'd do whatever prompt she wanted to give me. Because she's an odd person, her request was, essentially, 'Supernatural but make it an empty shell for Old Spice product placement' so... this one goes out to you, Bas, and almost certainly to no-one else.
> 
> Fandom: Supernatural  
> Ship/s: light Dean/Cas  
> With great apology to a song that I love and that didn't deserve this, title from: 'The Most' by Della Mae

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Referenced herein:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoF_PWSjd6xXVhIjSI7-Zq5gs2lH_i2r1
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq2SlCja3zo

Vic Mortbody switched his gaze from the mirror back to the TV screen and sighed. Just another night spent on his average, forgettable couch of uncertain colour in his average, forgettable apartment that was nevertheless way too big for what he could reasonably afford on his salary. Just another night looking at his man (himself), then back at him, then back at his man, and mourning the fact that he would never be him, because nowhere in his average, forgettable town stocked Old Spice deodorant or body wash. For a moment, as he looked back at the mirror, it was almost like he could visualize that big, beautiful, shining can behind him. It was the last thing he’d ever see on this Earth.

Sam was just washing the Old Spice Shea Butter Moisturizing Shampoo out of his hair when there was a knock on the bathroom door.

“Hey, Sammy, listen to this,” Dean called, and Sam huffed out an annoyed breath. That was a moment of alone time with the luxurious feel of shea butter that he was never going to get back. “There’s a man in some town a couple hours drive away, found dead in his living room, all the doors and windows still locked. And here’s the kicker – he was _flayed_ to death.”

“Flayed?” Sam called back, shutting off the shower, interested despite himself. “As in, his skin cut off?”

“All of it. Nowhere to be found.”

“Sounds like a case,” Sam agreed, opening the bathroom door on a waft of Old Spice Classic Aftershave.

“Meet you at Baby,” Dean said, and ducked back into his own room.

The police station had been a bust, although the deputy had spent a significant amount of time flirting with Dean, who had flirted right back until Cas stepped out from the spot behind the filing cabinet that he’d flown into so as not to appear out of nowhere in front of the civilians. Not that the civilians had seemed any less startled by a man in a trenchcoat appearing from behind their filing cabinet smelling of palm trees and coconut.

“Have you been at the beach, Cas?” Sam asked.

He looked at him briefly, and replied, “No. I washed with Fiji with Palm Tree Body Wash.”

“Right. Popular angel scent?”

“No. Dean keeps it. Angels prefer Swagger from the Red Collection, generally. Hello, Dean,” he capped off, belatedly.

“Hi, Cas,” Dean replied slightly guiltily as the deputy – whose scent of choice, Sam could tell from here, was Bearglove – looked on in bemusement. “And it’s Agent Crews, when we’re on duty.” As if he couldn’t help himself, he winked back at the deputy. He always had had a thing for bears.

“I found a similar case,” Cas informed them, ignoring Dean. “Two towns over, skinned, house locked up.”

“Huh,” Sam said. “Know anything about that?” he asked the deputy.

“Heard about it,” he said, slightly nervously. “But we’re pretty insular round here, not a lot of talk crosses towns.”

Dean traded a glance with Sam, then nodded back at the deputy. “Thanks, man,” he said.

“We’ll go to the scene tomorrow?” Sam asked as they left, darkness already beginning to fall across the winter afternoon.

“Yep,” Dean agreed. “Now, we go to the store. I need beer and food. You coming, Cas?”

Cas slid silently into the back of the Impala, which seemed to be a serviceable answer, and Dean shrugged.

When Sam walked into the living room of Mortbody’s house, after a quick search of the rest of the house had turned up nothing unusual, Dean and Cas were standing on opposite sides of the nondescript couch. Dean picked up the TV remote as Sam entered, and switched it on. On-screen, diamonds poured out of Isaiah Mustafa’s raised hand.

“Looks like Vic was watching Old Spice commercials when he was killed,” Dean said. “What a way to go.”

A scent appeared in the air, slowly strengthening, and Cas sniffed suspiciously. “That smells like-”

“Relax,” Dean cut across him.

“I am relaxed.”

“No, it smells like Relax. With Lavender. Old Spice body wash.”

“So?” Sam said. “Maybe he used it. It seems like he was a man with good, if average, taste.”

Dean shook his head. “None in the bathroom. And haven’t you noticed? No-one around here sells Old Spice.”

Sam frowned at him, something tickling at the back of his brain, but it wouldn’t come out. “So we’re thinking our monster takes showers using Old Spice products?”

“I mean-” Dean jerked and cut himself off, then turned the TV off with a start. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Sam asked.

“It looked like- Sammy, we gotta set up a devil’s trap.”

So, Devil’s Traps worked on sentient bottles of Old Spice Body Wash, apparently. At least, judging by the way that the bottle of Relax With Lavender that had materialised when Dean turned the advertisement back on was now standing frozen in the middle of one.

Cas was the first one to break the stunned silence, asking, “Why?”

The bottle’s cream-coloured eyebrows bent into a frown, and it spoke for the first time, through its lid top. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Everyone’s got a choice,” Dean said. “Even delicious-smelling bottles of body wash.”

“I’ve got a family to feed!” Relax exclaimed. “Between advertising spots, you know how much I get paid? Nothing. Upper management just exploits the labour of the workers.”

Sam sat down on the back of the couch, keeping a close eye on Relax, but he seemed to be well and truly trapped. “Someone’s been paying you to kill these people.”

Relax sniffed, then seemed to give up, his plastic collapsing in a slouch. “Yes. Deputy Dove.”

“That’s what it was!” Sam said, suddenly remembering. “He was wearing Bearglove, but there’s nowhere to buy Old Spice in this town.”

“Even while he was trying to take us down, he still couldn’t resist our scents,” Relax said, letting out a destitute chuckle. “He had me steal it from inside, for a bonus.”

“Why was he trying to take Old Spice down?” Dean asked, slightly scandalised.

“He’s representing a rival company.”

“But wait, how did you manage to skin the victims?” Sam asked, indicating his general lack of limbs.

Relax sighed, the breath rushing out of him in a sad waft of lavender. “It’s the power of Old Spice. Power.”

“Fair enough. We’ll get Deputy Dove taken down, right, guys?” he said to Dean and Cas.

They both nodded.

“What about me?” Relax asked.

Dean glanced at Sam. “I know we really should kill him, but…”

“But then Relax With Lavender Body Wash will be discontinued. And anyway, he had his reasons.”

Dean turned back to Relax. “If you promise to find less murder-y ways of bringing in extra income, we’ll let you go. Maybe you guys should unionise.”

“Krakengard has been trying to organise it,” Relax admitted. “I swear, I’ll dedicate all my time to helping him now.”

Sam reached his foot out and scuffed out the part of the Devil’s Trap closest to him. Before Relax could disappear, though, Cas put a hand out, grasping his side. Tilting his head to the side, Cas asked, “Why kill them like this?”

Relax looked around at all of them, allowing the question to sink into the air, then took a deep breath and answered. “Now, men don’t have skin.”


	15. Open Up Your Eyes And Tell Me, What Do You See? Do You See Somebody Looking Back At You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should I just put all my punnihawk ficlets in their own series? probably. Am I going to do that? probably not.
> 
> Fandom: MASH  
> Ship/s: BJ/Peg/Hawkeye, with a focus on Peg/Hawkeye  
> Title from: 'Colouring Book' by The Regrettes

BJ collapsed down onto the couch in a great flop of limbs, shortly followed by Hawkeye in a much more contained flop, although he obviously was doing his best to make it dramatic. On the ground in front of them, Erin, with great focus, executed a serviceable mirror flop, then promptly got distracted by the building blocks that had been left there and turned around to start constructing something. Left in peace for a moment, Hawkeye leant into BJ’s side, humming contentedly when BJ put his arm around him. Letting his head drop back onto the couch turned his gaze enough that he finally noticed Peg standing in the doorway. He smiled at her, and beckoned with the arm not tucked into BJ’s side. Despite the welcome in his eyes, she shook her head, and retreated back into the kitchen before BJ could notice her as well.

Shuffling noise and quiet murmurs from the living room, then footsteps, alerted Peg that Hawkeye was following her into the kitchen, and she knew he wasn’t cornering her – knew because he didn’t do that, because the closest she’d seen him come was playfully backing BJ against a wall one time, and he stepped away the second BJ stopped laughing; because neither of them could stand to feel trapped anymore, even though BJ used to love it when she lay on top of him; because one time, Hawkeye had been playing some strange cross between Tag and Hide & Seek with Erin and he’d crawled under a table and instantly frozen, and BJ had had to drag him out, and they both tried to hide these things from her but they hadn’t realised she was watching and she never wanted to see that shaken, shuddering expression on the face of anyone she cared about ever again. She knew Hawkeye wasn’t cornering her, because he didn’t do that, but she still felt cornered.

“Hey, Peg,” he said from the doorway, and she waved over her shoulder and didn’t turn around from the carrots she was cutting. He took a few steps further inside, and asked, “Can I help chop something?”

That was a nice, safe, topic, and Hawkeye had a hand for swift, neat vegetable slicing that BJ had never had, so she turned slightly towards him and waved a hand at the bowl of potatoes. “They’re going to be mashed,” she told him, and he nodded and reached for another board and knife.

They chopped side by side in silence for a moment, but it had taken Peg very little time to realise that Hawkeye was physically incapable of staying silent for more than a few minutes. Sure enough, Peg hadn’t even finished with the carrots before he opened his mouth and said, a little hesitantly, “It seems, sorta, like you’re avoiding me. BJ will tell you, I don’t do well with being avoided. Or ignored. Or anything that robs anyone of my beautiful presence. It’s my service to humanity, you know, to continue being annoyingly charming, and I can’t do that if you’re not around to be annoyingly charmed.”

“I’m not avoiding you,” Peg replied, ignoring the patented Hawkeye blather that had come with the actual question. It was true enough, she wasn’t avoiding him, she was avoiding him and BJ together as one unit, it was just that Hawkeye didn’t spend a whole lot of time detached from BJ’s side yet. Or BJ from Hawkeye’s, for that matter, but he also stuck like glue to Peg’s side now, so she was fairly certain the war had just taken his natural tendencies towards clinginess and turned them up to eleven, at least in the short-term.

“Right. Well. What are you avoiding?” Hawkeye asked, because on top of being annoyingly charming, he was also annoyingly dogged and insightful.

She sighed. “You can do the beans now.”

He obediently put the knife down and turned to the bowl of green beans. “I assume you’re not avoiding BJ, since he hasn’t said anything. And he’d notice, even if he’d just get all sulky and passive-aggressive about it.” Hawkeye pulled an exaggerated moping face, and Peg actually laughed. He’d perfectly captured BJ’s ‘I’m hurt but I don’t want to tell you, I just want you to notice’ expression.

“I’m not avoiding BJ,” she confirmed.

“That doesn’t leave many options. You’re really going to make me guess?”

“I’m avoiding you and BJ when you’re together. I don’t want to… I feel like I’m intruding.”

“Oh,” Hawkeye said softly, and she put down the knife and turned to face him.

“Not like I think you two are cutting me out,” she explained, before he could get the wrong idea. “Or that BJ’s not still mine. I mean, ours, but also mine.”

Hawkeye shrugged. “Yeah. So what is it, then? I don’t want to…” It was Hawkeye’s turn to trail off on that this time, and it took him a moment before he restarted, “It’s your house. It’s your husband. You shouldn’t feel out of place. What can I do?”

Peg noticed that he didn’t offer to leave, and she was glad about that, because the Hawkeye that had turned up on their doorstep only a few months ago definitely would have. It was that gladness that let her say, “It is about you, not BJ. It- it feels like we’re two different couples living in the same house, with BJ the link in the middle. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I suppose, but it’s a little…”

Hawkeye sighed and raised a hand to scratch through his hair, a nervous tic that only seemed to come out when he had to talk seriously about emotions. “I mean, right now, we are. But for what it’s worth, I’d like to see us close the circle. If you want to try. Do you want to try?”

They had been dancing around it all these months, Peg knew that, and she’d been part of that, but she still couldn’t bring herself to confirm or deny. It still felt like too much, and she was grateful that Hawkeye stayed silent while she tried to work through why that was.

“I suppose,” she started finally. “It’s just that... I know BJ has space for both of us in his heart, and more – I realized that while you were still in Korea. I don’t know the same for you. Or for me.”

Hawkeye took a deep breath. “Okay. Well, I can’t speak for you, but I... I’ve never fallen out of love.”

She frowned at him, and he went on, “Really. I’m still in love with Tommy Gillis, and Kyung Soon, and John McIntyre, and Carlye Breslin. And I don’t know, I’m pretty sure that if I have space for all of them, and for Beej, I can fit in Peg Hunnicutt as well. If she’ll let me.”

Peg inhaled slowly. Before she could reply, Hawkeye jumped in to add, “And from what I’ve seen, your heart doesn’t seem particularly small. Quite the opposite.”

She was smiling back before she’d really thought about it. And there was the thing after all – it was entirely possible her heart had started on this endeavour already, before her brain had agreed to it. “That might be true,” she acknowledged. “Alright. Okay. Let’s try.”

Hawkeye’s answering grin split his face into half, and he called back over his shoulder, “BJ! Come watch me kiss your wife!”

There was a scrambling crash from the living room that sounded suspiciously like BJ falling off the couch, and Peg was very glad that she’d already put down the knife as she collapsed into laughter, driven by the tension release as much as by amusement, grabbing onto Hawkeye’s arm for support. Hawkeye was no use, though, because he was laughing just as hard as her, partially set off _by_ her, and the sight that greeted BJ when he finally made it into the kitchen was the both of them sitting on the tiled floor, clinging onto each other as they shook with laughter.


	16. Reason Comes In The Common Tongue Of Your Loving Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This went through about five different titles in the short process of writing it, and the very close runner-up was 'i've seen it flicker underneath your lashes / and if that's a fire, then i'm bound for ashes' from Mo'Ju's song Switched To Drinkin' Gin, but I decided if I wanted y'all to be listening to any song while reading this, it was this one.
> 
> Set, as will be clear, post-series, and contains minor spoilers for 15x18-15x20 but like. if you've been on Tumblr you know them. also I'm ignoring the vast majority of 15x20. Almost called it 'all reason flown as god looks on in abject apathy' but then I overthought it like. their son is god right now... doesn't feel like he should be looking on at all.
> 
> Fandom: Supernatural  
> Ship/s: Dean/Cas  
> Title from: 'Moment's Silence (Common Tongue)' by Hozier  
> Rating: I'm gonna put it at a moderate M - it's technically (at least the start of) a sex scene, but it's extremely light to the point of nonexistence on any actual sexual detail and is mostly just an excuse for me to write copious amounts of my fave destiel tropes, including religious imagery.

Dean has had sex with a lot of people. Men and women, even though it’s less men, because maybe he didn’t admit he was bi until into his thirties. Whatever, he’s blaming it on the homophobic upbringing. The point is, Dean has had bad sex, Dean has had good sex, Dean has had great sex. Dean has even had sex with someone who he loved and who loved him before (and if he gets Sammy to check up on Lisa and Ben every few months, it’s because Sam’s marginally better at finding the weird little internet hidey-holes of information, not at all because Dean is trying to stop himself from going down a spiral looking at pictures of them. Okay? Okay). This, though? This is different.

The air is still, but also hums with sparks, like some buried beast is slowly awaking. Breathtakingly, heart-stoppingly slowly, as every second seems to lengthen into hours. Dean would be tempted to think that Cas was actually employing some kind of angel hoodoo to slow time, some new power Jack had given him when he’d pulled him out of the Empty this time, if it weren’t for the fact that time had crawled almost to a standstill one, two, five, sixty minutes ago when Dean’s hands had been on Cas’s body and Dean had been able to see far enough past the commotion of his own body to see that Cas had been far too distracted to be pulling any kind of magic trick.

Cas is lying on the other side of the bed now, had near-thrown himself there after his shirt had made it to the floor and Dean had muttered something about his own. Dean doesn’t know why, doesn’t know whether Cas didn’t trust himself to remove Dean’s clothes without ripping them or whether he just wanted to watch and couldn’t stay close enough to touch without, well, touching; but his gaze is heavy on Dean now, unblinking, and Dean is guessing the latter as he swallows past the sudden lump in his throat and breathes past the weight on his chest.

As he undresses, he catches something else in Cas’s eyes that makes him pause, his shirt discarded on the floor behind him and his jeans halfway through sliding off his hips. It’s not lust, or love, or hunger, or anything else he’s used to seeing in a lover’s eyes – oh, those are all there, and he can hear breath catching in the back of Cas’s throat in the same way his own caught when Cas let him push the layers of cloth off his pale shoulders. But the something else is not any of that. There’s glimpses of pride and possessiveness and knowledge and a haunting familiarity shining, and with a start, Dean remembers something he hasn’t thought about for years. Cas _does_ already know all of him, because Cas is the one who rebuilt him, body and soul, piece by piece, before they ever met. Cas is not just looking at Dean, but in a very literal sense, at his own creation. It’s a sharp celestial reminder in the middle of a terribly human act, and Cas must see Dean lose his breath in an entirely new way, because he blinks, and the look is gone, and he’s moving across the bed towards Dean.

There’s no dignified, angelic way to get from one side of a mattress to another, and Dean would be laughing at the sight of Cas’s awkward crawl if he weren’t too busy being once again all-over struck by the fact that Cas – _Castiel_ , who allowed Dean to remove God’s suffix from his name days after meeting him – is half-naked on Dean’s bed. Even though the physical mark has been gone for almost ten years, his right shoulder burns as Cas approaches, until he almost doesn’t realise when Cas reaches out and grasps his arm, palm closing over the same spot as when he pulled him out of hell and when he pushed him away. This time, he pulls him closer, until Dean’s hips are bumping against the top of the bed, and rises to his knees to kiss him. He is at prayer, with his hands on Dean’s shoulders and his words in Dean’s mouth. Dean’s hands rise automatically to grip his waist, and the rough calluses of his palms rub friction against the perfectly smooth skin, celestial healing erasing every injury Cas’s body has endured. Cas must feel it too, because a shudder runs through him at the touch, and when Dean lifts his hands further, sliding them along his ribs and flexing experimentally, Cas moans, openmouthed, against Dean’s lips. His hands fall from Dean’s shoulders, seemingly uncontrolled, until they land on his hips, pushing his jeans to the floor.

Dean feels himself tremble in response, his body needing to do something, anything to get closer to Cas, but his mind blinking in and out of service, unable to recollect movement as he is overwhelmed by soft touch and the sharp scent of ozone which always hangs around Cas. Every time he has left them over the past eleven years, whether through choice or torn from them, torn from _Dean_ , that smell of ozone has haunted Dean’s dreams, and every time he comes back to them, it’s been the thing that Dean clings to.

He knows, now, that that smell will follow his dreams in an entirely new way, and it’s that sudden knowledge which pulls him into movement, kicking out of the last piece of clothing, the last barrier between his body and Cas’s touch, and pushes him forward onto the bed, still slow, still controlled, but with a newfound drive that has pulled them out of the standstill they were crawling towards. Cas moves with him, shifting together, rolling and stretching until Dean is lying on top of Cas, hovering a few inches over him, unable to bring himself to breach that last space. Cas’s blue eyes are wide open, staring up at Dean, head bent back against the pillow, but it feels wrong seeing him like this. Cas has been damn vulnerable enough this entire time, the first to open, the first to give Dean the chance to crush his heart, the chance that Dean had never been able to afford to him before. It’s Dean’s turn, and this, action, is the best way he knows how.

Something must twist in his face, because Cas reaches up and brushes a hand over Dean’s cheekbone, feather-soft, and whispers, “Dean…”

His name is said as if it is sacred, and Dean has to close his eyes as he rolls off Cas, unable to handle sight and sound and touch all at the same time, afraid that he might collapse into the open black hole of emotion swirling inside him if he is free to watch Cas’s face at the same time as he hears his voice and feels his skin. He grows cold a moment later, though, and reaches out to Cas, eyes still closed. Cas takes his hand, and seems to read Dean’s needs as easily as he always does, because Dean feels shifting movement through the mattress, then a warm weight on top of him. It takes him a moment to realise that the movement was Cas shucking his own pants, that he is now entirely naked above Dean, and the breath rushes out of Dean in a long exhale as he stretches, shifts, just to feel the friction between their bodies, feel Cas’s breathing hitch against his own chest. He hooks his legs over Cas’s, wraps his arms around his torso, twists them together. His hands rest in the shallow indentations just either side of the bottom of Cas’s spine, and when Cas’s fingers come up to Dean’s cheek again, brushing lightly through the hair over his temple, Dean realises he still hasn’t opened his eyes. Instead, he brings one hand up to twine into Cas’s hair, pulling him down into a kiss that’s as scorching as it is soft, long and slow and rendering Dean entirely unable to move even if he wanted to. And he very, very much doesn’t want to. Right at this moment, he’d be happy to spend the rest of his life under Cas’s body.

When Cas finally draws back, Dean’s eyes flutter open, almost of their own accord. Cas is watching him again, looking at him as if Dean is a miracle handmade for him. Above him, the ceiling light casts a halo behind his head, a mundane, earthly, miraculous halo, and Dean almost laughs, vulnerable and safe and heartfelt in the embrace of his very own miracle.


	17. You Can Help 'Em Find Their Wings But You Can't Fly For 'Em

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, I am caught up! Ha-ha!
> 
> Anyway, this is mostly because it... bothered me how Eliot reacted to Sophie's hypnotic suggestion (and I mean. that is essentially what it is) in The Reunion Job, and how none of them seem to take it seriously. So. Missing scene, more or less immediately after that scene where she suggests him into serving her tea.  
> Title is mostly my little team dynamic joke, because it's from a song that's a parent talking about their kids.
> 
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Ship/s: none - Sophie & Eliot  
> Title from: 'Send 'Em On Down The Road' by Garth Brooks (this one goes out to Eliot Spencer and his country music...)

“Hey, Sophie.”

Sophie turned around, waving at Nate to go on, and took the couple steps back to where Eliot was rinsing cups at the kitchen sink. “Yes, Eliot?”

“About the brainwashing,” Eliot said, swallowing.

“Neurolinguistic programming,” she corrected.

“Whatever. I need you to stop doing that.”

“Sorry, I know it annoys you,” she said artlessly. “I just couldn’t resist this time.”

She was obviously distracted thinking about the job, because it was _Sophie_ , and usually she’d have caught on already. Hell, usually she’d have caught on just from the fact that Eliot had asked her to stop. “It doesn’t just annoy me,” he corrected. “It… I need you to stop. I need to know that _I’m_ the one in control of what I’m doing.”

That made her turn her gaze fully to him, taking in what he was saying for the first time. “Oh,” she said solemnly. “I’m sorry, Eliot, I didn’t realise it was a trigger for you. You didn’t say anything the first time, so I assumed you were just getting annoyed, like you do with Hardison.” She blinked, apparently remembering that ‘didn’t say anything’ wasn’t a terribly good barometer for Eliot’s feelings most of the time, and swiped a hand down her own cheek. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I should have realised.”

“It’s alright,” he said. She looked just guilty enough that he felt like he had to explain it, at least partially, but he couldn’t tell her the biggest reason. He’d kept quiet about Moreau when Nate had first mentioned him, he could hardly go suddenly telling Sophie now about the way that Moreau exercised his power, about the way he dug and twisted and cut until he’d found exactly the pressure points he needed to make you do whatever he wanted without even thinking about it. That the reason he’d been so hesitant about joining the crew in the first place was that he’d sworn to himself after he left Moreau that he was never going to work under anyone for longer than a single job ever again, just in case they learnt and manipulated the same things he had. And while he was fairly sure that by now Nate _had_ learnt at least some of them, he was also sure that, as manipulative as he could be, he would at least never use those things. And what Sophie was doing wasn’t at all the same, not really, he knew that, but it still put him out of control of his own actions in a way that made his stomach churn and roil.

She was still looking at him, and he realised he’d been silent for too long. He sighed, and gave her a different part of the truth. “It’s not just recent history.” And she _could_ patch together enough about his work before them to have a rough idea of what that meant, he was sure, even without Moreau. “I’ve never been able to stand the feeling of not being in charge of myself. When I was a kid, we went to the county fair, and there was one of those three-trick magicians walking around, in a cheap suit with scarves stuffed up the sleeve, y’know the type. Anyway, we went to watch him, and he declared that he was going to hypnotise someone, and I don’t know, I don’t know if my dad was pointing to me, or if I just looked too interested, or what, but he picked me. And he managed it, alright. All he made me do was cluck like a chicken, and everyone, including my dad, laughed and clapped and everything, but I was more panicked than I’d ever been in my life when he released me. More panicked than I would be for a long time more. I had nightmares about it for months.”

Sophie’s face had softened as he spoke, falling into Team Mom expression, and he turned away from her, scrubbing the teapot harder. That memory seemed ridiculous and trivial now, but it still carried a note of fear.

“You are very suggestible,” she told him, and he nodded. He knew that, and it was one of the relatively few things that he actually, genuinely hated about himself. He hated a lot of the things he’d done, but not much of who he was, but that was something he’d gladly rip out of himself given the chance. Partly because it had contributed to some of those things that he’d done, but not entirely.

“I think that’s why I didn’t think about what I was doing as a big thing, because it was so easy,” Sophie continued, then paused. “If you want, I can teach you about how to do it.”

He balked at that, the thought of ever doing that to someone else throwing him so off-kilter that he almost dropped the teapot at the sheer wrongness of it, and she rushed to explain.

“Not so that you can use it, just because it might make you less susceptible to it. I can’t promise it will, but it does for some people. I don’t have any other way to help with it, at least, not any that don’t involve implanting more patterns into you, and don’t worry, I won’t do that anymore. I promise. But understanding the full procedure might help you recognise it if anyone else tries to, and that can help to weaken it.”

He blinked down at the now-empty sink, the pot and cups all piled on a teatowel next to it because Nate refused to buy a drying rack for some inane reason. “You don’t have to.”

She scoffed lightly, waving a hand in the air. “Eliot, we all teach each other our skills constantly. You corrected my kicking last week. Besides, this will help me feel like I’m making amends.”

He was aware that she was providing him with a reason that let him agree for her sake rather than his, which felt suspiciously close to manipulation in a conversation that was about avoiding manipulation, but he forgave it since he was fairly sure she knew he would have recognised it for what it was. Also because it was Sophie, and he wasn’t sure it was actually possible for her to have an entire conversation without some sort of psychological whiz-bang trick, even one as mild as this. “Alright,” he agreed. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” She brushed a hand over his shoulder, then gestured towards the front door. “Not right now, though, I think the rest of the team is waiting for us.”

“Yep,” he agreed briskly, drying his hands on another teatowel – he had a sneaking suspicion that maybe Nate just wanted an excuse to collect them, they seemed like the sort of weirdo thing he’d choose to collect. She walked out the door, and he followed, shutting the door behind him. Maybe he then ducked in front of Sophie, leading the way out of the bar, but she let him, so that was fine. He could deal with her knowing the way his brain was working, now that he knew she wouldn’t do anything with that knowledge.


	18. Never Thought It'd Be Easy, Never Knew It'd Be So Hard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anyway, I refuse to believe that Danny wouldn't follow Steve to the airport in any state less than actively paralysed (yes I recognise that a good meta argument can be made for why he wouldn't, but it's a sad argument, so I don't want to know about it). 
> 
> Aloha coda/missing scene/divergent
> 
> Fandom: Hawaii Five-0  
> Ship/s: Steve/Danny or Steve & Danny, depending on how you like to read it. It's canon-typical McDanno intimacy, in other words.  
> Title from: 'Quittin' Kind' by Kristin Diable

Steve’s talking to the taxi driver, telling him where to go, when Danny opens the door and slides in next to him. He cuts himself off in the middle of the words ‘domestic terminal’, instead saying, “Domes- didn’t I just say goodbye to you?”

“You did,” Danny agrees. He shifts in the seat, and just manages to avoid wincing at the pang that shoots through his hip.

Steve blinks at him, then says to the driver, “Sorry. I guess you’re taking both of us. HNL domestic terminal.”

The driver nods, adjusting his mirror before he pulls away, and Steve turns back to Danny but stays silent, waiting for an explanation.

“You said goodbye on your terms,” Danny supplies eventually. “My terms involve actually seeing you walk onto the plane.”

Steve sighs, still watching Danny just a little too closely. “I don’t think a 10-minute car ride each way to the airport plus walking on concrete there is going to help your injuries.”

“And yet you didn’t kick me out of the taxi,” Danny snipes back, with maybe a touch more bitterness than he usually would.

He regrets the bitterness a little, minorly, when Steve’s returning look is meltingly soft. “I know you better than to think I could have, Danno. You know that.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s bag is on the seat between them, and it steals away any verve Danny might have had to construct a proper retort. He was running low on verve anyway. Steve follows his gaze down to the bag, looks back up at Danny’s face, then twists to lift it off and drop it onto the floor of the taxi between his feet. He moves one leg enough to bump lightly against Danny’s, and Danny sighs and looks up at him. “You are coming back, right?”

“Of course I’m coming back. My house is here, my family’s here. You’re here.”

“Yeah,” Danny repeats. He knows Steve’s telling the truth, because, well, there’s no reason for him not to be, and Danny can tell when Steve’s lying by now. It’s still not doing too much to relieve the ache around his sternum that has nothing to do with his injuries.

Steve reaches out, places a hand on Danny’s thigh, and makes a shaking movement that somehow doesn’t actually shake Danny at all. The man has some weird little physical loopholes accessible to him. “Hey,” he says, and waits until Danny makes eye contact with him to continue, “I promise. I can’t give you a date, but I promise I’ll be back. And hey, if you recover enough before then, you can fly out and find me. I’ll keep you updated on where I am the whole time.”

“Oh, great, I can come find you in Iran this time, because I haven’t flown to enough active military sites to meet you already.”

Steve chuckles. “I’m really, really not planning to visit any war zones here, Danny. The worst you’re gonna have to brave is, I don’t know, African desert.”

“This isn’t encouraging me.”

“How about this?” Steve offers consolingly, patting Danny’s leg. “You tell me you want to fly out to meet me, I’ll make sure I’m in Alaska or Greece or somewhere you think is civilised.”

“Make it Maine or Rome, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Maine?”

“It’s on the opposite side of the country to Alaska. And California.”

“What’ve you got against California?”

“If I’m going on holiday from Hawaii, I’m not going to go to Hawaii’s knock-off cousin.”

Steve laughs at that, a full, startled, laugh. “I think most Hawaiians _and_ most Californians would be offended by that characterisation.”

They’re pulling into the airport as Danny huffs and replies, “Yeah, exactly.” He’s saved from having to explain what he means by that by the taxi rolling to a stop, and Steve leaning forward to pay the driver. Danny’s just managed to open his own door and get one leg out by the time that Steve’s paid, gotten out, slung his bag across his back, and come around to Danny’s side. He offers a hand, which Danny takes after a moment, because he might be stubborn but he’s not an idiot. Steve pulls him up onto the pavement in what seems to be one easy movement for him, even though Danny’s body is creaking and grumbling like crazy. Steve leans around him to shut the door, and the taxi rolls away, and Steve is still holding his hand, watching him with worried eyes. Danny waves a hand past him at the terminal entrance. “Don’t you have a flight to catch?”

Steve hums in agreement, and turns to face the entrance without dropping Danny’s hand. Danny sighs, squeezes Steve’s hand and lets go himself – he wants to cling to Steve far too much right now to let himself actually do it – and begins his slow shuffle inside. Steve matches his pace, even though it’s rather like the hare hanging back to have a discussion about lettuce varieties with the turtle.

Steve’s got no checked luggage, and neither of them set off the metal detectors, so they’re inside the terminal and at the gate before Danny really realises it. He takes one look at the tiny plastic seats and promptly decides to stand, leaning against the back of one. Steve stands facing him, looking awkwardly, well, awkward, and Danny has opened his arms before his brain can tell him it’s a bad idea because he may never actually let go of Steve once he’s holding him. It’s too late now, because Steve steps in immediately, wrapping Danny in a terribly light embrace as if he’s afraid he’ll break him if he actually squeezes at all. It’s probably a fair worry with the current state of Danny’s body, and possibly even fairer with the state of his brain. Danny, though, can hug Steve tight, and he does, focusing on warmth and Steve’s familiar smell and ignoring the part of his brain that’s screaming about having to let go.

“Flight 1083 commencing boarding at Gate 12,” a cool voice announces, far too soon, and Danny begins the slow process of convincing his body to release Steve.

“I’ll be back,” Steve promises softly, just before he manages it, and he exhales and drops his arms. He’ll be back.

Steve raises a hand to brush Danny’s cheek, melancholy resting behind his eyes, before he hoists his bag and goes to join the boarding queue. Danny turns to watch him, and manages to smile when Steve turns at the gateway to look back at him. Steve raises a hand, and Danny nods and watches him walk away before he turns away himself and heads back out the airport.

It isn’t until he’s standing back outside, without Steve, that one thing really hits Danny. This will be the first time since Mexico, and Doris, where he almost died, that they’ve been separated for more than 24 hours. He leans against the outside wall, ignoring the plants in the bed next to him doing their best to pull him into their leafy green embrace, ignoring the taxi rank down the bland grey path, and pulls out his phone.

He cycles through about ten different messages - ‘I love you’, ‘come back’, ‘how much was your plane ticket bc I’m seriously considering hopping the next one to wherever it is you’re going right now, damn the injuries’, ‘you realise Eddie’s going to fall into a depression over not seeing you’ - before he settles on a simple truth. ‘Miss you already.’

He’s made it to the taxi rank when his phone buzzes in reply. Steve: ‘me too, Danno. call you when we land.’

Danny lowers himself into a taxi, and resigns himself to spending the next however many months waiting on Steve’s calls like a lovesick teenager.


	19. Oh, Goddamn, My Pain Fits In The Palm Of Your Freezing Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basically, I made myself sad with yesterday's so I had to write this one.
> 
> Fandom: Hawaii Five-0  
> Ship/s: Steve/Danny  
> Title from: 'Ivy' by Taylor Swift - this lyric not because it's actually the most applicable one, but because it's the one that looped through my head the entire time I was writing this.

Steve pauses at the front door for a moment, staring at familiar wood, before he pushes it open. There’s a bark from the kitchen, and a moment later Eddie runs straight into his legs, skidding the last few inches as he tries and fails to stop his momentum. Steve laughs and drops to his knees, pushing the door shut behind him with one hand and letting his bag drop off his shoulder as Eddie crawls into his lap, tail wagging furiously, licking all over Steve’s face and occasionally stopping to bark at him again in what sounds distinctly like a reprimand for being away for so long. Steve buries his hands into Eddie’s fur, patting down his sides as Eddie wriggles happily.

He barks again, and Danny’s voice calls from the kitchen, “What is it, Eddie? I’m coming, I’m coming.”

It’s probably only a few seconds later, but Steve feels like he spends at least half an hour with his gaze fixed over Eddie’s head on the kitchen doorway, waiting for Danny to come out. When he does, he freezes in place. He’s holding a butter knife, and it almost slips from his fingers, his grip tightening again at the last second. “Steve?” he says, barely above a murmur, then grins and surges forward. “Outta the way, Eddie,” he says, nudging him to the side as Steve stands up. Eddie’s still half-between them as Danny hugs him and he falls into familiarity. He’d known he’d missed this awfully, had spent nights laying in hotel beds thinking about that fact, but now, with a grip he hasn’t felt in five months around his waist and hard, warm shoulders under his hands and the smell of imported New Jersey hair gel and butter and home surrounding him, he suddenly thinks he’d had no idea how much he’d missed it until right now.

Danny pulls back slightly – very slightly, and the handle of the butter knife that he’s still holding is digging into Steve’s back now, but he can’t bring himself to care – and accuses, “You didn’t tell me you were coming home.”

“I know,” Steve says, and since Cath left a couple months ago he’s barely talked to anyone, communicating with Danny mostly via text as their time zones clashed, and his voice feels rusty from disuse. “I wanted to surprise you.” It’s slightly more than that; he didn’t want Danny to have plans for his return because then he wouldn’t be able to just talk to him as soon as he got back, and he didn’t trust himself to bottle it up for any longer without deciding that it could wait, and it could wait, and it could wait. And he knows just from looking at Danny’s face that he knows there’s more to it just from looking at Steve’s face, and that sends a wave of peace through Steve that if he’s honest, nothing in the past five months has managed.

Danny backs away properly, letting Steve push his bag into the corner between the door and the couch. Eddie jumps up at him one last time, accepting an apologetic scratch behind the ears, then wanders over to the couch, jumps up and turns around and flops down, apparently accepting that Steve’s back now. Steve thinks Danny’s trying to lead him into the kitchen as he starts to walk, but they don’t make it there, Steve grabbing him under the stairs instead, pulling him into another hard hug. Danny reaches out behind him and drops the knife onto the shelves. “I love you,” Steve whispers with his chin resting on Danny’s shoulder, overcome by it.

Danny reaches one hand up between them, placing it on Steve’s chest, and Steve feels all of the golden threads of who he is gather themselves up and spool together in that spot, glowing soul resting inside Danny’s palm, and he goes still, not daring to move and disturb it as Danny replies, “I love you.”

“I love you so much,” Steve says, and hears his voice crack under the weight of the words, the words so flimsy to bear the weight of such emotion. He pulls back slightly, enough that he can see Danny’s face as he frowns minutely, his hand dropping back to Steve’s hips. “I… I trust you with my life, you know that?” he says, expression twisting. “And not just– I’d let you hold a gun to my head or a knife to my chest without fear, because I _trust_ you, whatever you’re doing. I shouldn’t trust like that, my whole life has been teaching me that I shouldn’t trust like that, but I _do_.”

Danny looks like he’s about to say something, reply or reciprocation or defusing, but Steve continues before he can, unable to deal with anything more than the knowledge he reflexively pulls from his expressions. “I spent the last five months– I did need to do it, I needed the difference and the clarity, but I spent the last five months missing you. I mean, I missed everything, I missed everyone, but I didn’t sit up at night thinking about Hawaii or Junior or Eddie or anyone else. I sat up at night missing you, until Cath started refusing to sleep in the same hotel room as me because she said I was keeping her awake broadcasting homesickness. It wasn’t homesickness, though. Or, I guess it was, but you were the home.”

Danny gets as far as opening his mouth at that, and Steve pleads, “Don’t,” bringing his hands up from Danny’s waist to drop on chest, shoulders, arms, falling to rest around his biceps, holding him in place even though he’s shown no signs of trying to leave. “I just have to say this.”

Danny closes his mouth and nods, watching Steve through thick blonde lashes, listening for the conclusion, whether Steve can bring himself to put it into words or not.

“You…” Steve starts, suddenly robbed of the words by the close gaze. He gathers himself and continues, “It’s corny and cheesy and it isn’t exactly right, but you’re everything. What is right, is, I can’t picture myself without you.” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t _want_ to picture myself without you, but I can’t anyway. You know when we video-called and you were sitting in my bed? That felt more right than anything had felt since you moved into my house.”

Danny quirks an eyebrow, and Steve laughs, the released breath skipping over bumps of emotion and coming out juddering.

“Our house,” he corrects himself. “Our bed, now, I suppose.”

Danny smiles up at him, not exactly smug but safe and slow with an edge of arrogant charm framed as an in-joke.

“And I guess that’s the point. Danny, you’re in every part of me, and it’s like, it’s like-” he skips over his words, trying to pull together something that will communicate this properly, casting back to conversations on trains with Catherine where he’d been feeling all this emotion but without the man in front of him, overwhelming him and shuffling his words together. “It’s like, I was grey before I met you. And then, slowly, you spread through me, and I started growing colour, yellows and reds and greens. And then you introduced me to Grace, and part of that colour lit up in shining gold, and you hugged me, and another part lit up, and you said you loved me, and another part lit up. There’s colour everywhere now, your colour, all through me, and the parts that aren’t glowing feel wrong, now.” 

He falls silent, distantly aware that his chest is heaving like he’s just run miles. Danny raises a hand and says, “Am I allowed to speak now?”

Steve nods. He’s said as much as he thinks he can say, and he just has to trust that Danny will know what he means, the same way he always does.

“Okay. You realise that sounded a _lot_ like marriage vows?”

Steve nods again.

“Good, just checking. It’s gonna make it difficult for you to top it when it comes to actual marriage vows. Actually, it means I’m gonna have to marry you just to watch you try.”

“What?” Steve says, slightly blank now, a little slow on the uptake, and Danny puts the hand he’d raised on the back of Steve’s head and pulls him down. Steve follows the movement, automatic, an inherent reflex, because it’s Danny and of course he does, and when their lips meet it feels less like a shock and more like slotting the final puzzle piece into place, hearing the last tumbler fall in a lock, and the last, deep part of Steve lights up into bright, gleaming gold.


	20. Is It Cool To Go To Sleep On The Floor? I Don't Think I Can Take Any More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coda to Heroes
> 
> Fandom: MASH  
> Ship/s: lightly implied BJ/Hawkeye/Peg  
> Title from: 'Stuck In The Middle With You' by Stealers Wheel

“Oh god,” Hawkeye groaned from his bunk, and BJ looked over from where he was sprawled on his own reading Peg’s most recent letter.

“What is it?” he asked.

Silently, Hawkeye shook out a piece of newspaper and looked at BJ with great despair in his eyes. “My dad sent the newspaper article.”

BJ barked out a laugh and scrambled across, reaching out for it. “Oh my god. Gimme, gimme.”

Hawkeye transferred it to his other hand, holding it out towards to the tent wall, but gave up and let go when BJ didn’t stop and just threw himself across Hawkeye’s body. “Gentleman Joe Cavanaugh Dies In Korea… Hear From Heroic Doctor Who Tried To Save Him.”

Hawkeye buried his face in his hands. “It’s such bullshit!”

“You look very dashing in your white coat, though,” BJ said consolingly, settling onto the bunk next to Hawkeye with one leg hanging off onto the ground and reaching out to pat him with one hand, eyes still focused on the article. “That headline really makes it sound like he died fighting, not had a stroke in the middle of a peaceful steak dinner.”

“It should have been your photo in that newspaper, Hunnicutt,” Charles said stoutly from his bunk, proving that he apparently had actually been listening, despite not having looked up from his own mail.

“It should have been,” Hawkeye agreed, voice muffled by his hands.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” BJ replied. “Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t have to live through being psychoanalysed by the _Maine Enquirer_. Listen to this, Hawk, you’re ‘always quick with a sharp reply, but the quips seem to cover up a cynical melancholy, likely borne from caring too much for patients who too often meet the same fate as the great Cavanaugh’. Actually, that’s a little too on point, you think they tracked down Sidney for input?”

“Sidney wouldn’t betray me like that.”

BJ scanned further down, and laughed. “Never mind, they call you a ladykiller, they clearly don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.”

“Hey!”

“I gotta send this to Peg, she’ll love it.”

Hawkeye finally took his hands away from his face to scramble into action and pull the article away from BJ, clutching it protectively to his chest. “No, that’s my copy, you can’t send it to your wife.”

“That’s fine,” BJ said airily. “I know what newspaper it was now, I can tell her and she’ll find it. Actually, I could write Daniel and ask him to send her a copy.”

“Do you even know my dad’s address?”

“No, but I’m sure I can get Klinger to find out and tell me. She’s gonna love having an actual photo of you to put up.”

“No!” Hawkeye exclaimed. “I don’t want the first picture Erin sees of me to be from that time I did nothing and let a man die!”

“It won’t be,” BJ pointed out. “There’s the reunion photo we all took. Plus I’m pretty sure Daniel turned up to the party with a roll of pictures from when you were a baby right up to your draft photo.”

“Oh.” Hawkeye subsided slightly. “That’s true, he probably did. You think Erin will recognise me if we ever get out of this stupid war?”

“I think there’s a decent chance.”

“You may,” Charles interjected, “be putting a little too much faith in the capabilities of an eighteen-month-old.”

“Let me rephrase that for Charles’ pedantic ears. I think, given that Peg has shown her photos of both of us, that there’s almost as much of a chance that she’ll recognise you as that she’ll recognise me, and since I have to keep believing that she’ll recognise me for the sake of my own sanity, I also believe she’s likely to recognise you.”

“Hmm,” Charles hummed, and went back to the newspaper he was reading.

“Ignore him,” Hawkeye said. “She’ll recognise you.”

BJ sighed. “Can we go back to mocking you? That was a lot more fun.”

“Not for me it isn’t.”

Ignoring him, BJ peered conspicuously over Hawkeye’s arm at the article, now discarded on his chest. “ _Maine Enquirer_ , page 8, right? Actually, Cavanaugh had been in Hollywood for years, hadn’t he? There’s probably a Los Angeles newspaper with an article on it, Peg could get that herself.”

“You’re gonna make her drive 400 miles to the other end of the state just to get an article about me doing nothing?”

“No, Mill Valley likes knowing the celebrity news, same as everywhere, so they import most of the LA news. Those ones might focus less on you, though. Hm.”

“Oh, good point,” Hawkeye said, nudging him off the bunk with one elbow. “Go tell her to find one of those ones. Maybe I’ll get lucky and it won’t mention me at all.”

“Little chance of that,” Charles snorted.

“Face it, you’re a media darling,” BJ told him. “A natural for the camera.”

“Trapper told me that once,” Hawkeye said nostalgically, and BJ groaned and rolled off the bunk. Which had probably been Hawkeye’s intended effect. Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought about the effects of rolling off, and ended up collapsed on the ground. Hawkeye took pity on him and reached down, helping to haul him into a standing position.

Once roughly upright again, he went back over to his own side of the tent and rummaged for paper and pen. “Dear Peg, Hawk’s in the paper,” he said out loud as he wrote, and Hawkeye groaned, significantly louder and more dramatically than BJ had a second ago, and got up, coming over to BJ’s bunk.

“Give me that,” he said, making grabby hands at the paper. “If you’re really going to tell her, at least let me write to her as well. Otherwise god knows what you’re going to say.”

“Does Mrs. Hunnicutt appreciate getting letters with you two scrawling over the top of each other?” Charles asked.

“Yes, she finds it amusing,” BJ retorted, and handed the letter over to Hawkeye, who promptly started scribbling a sentence beneath BJ’s, no doubt telling Peg not to listen to a word he said. Which, of course, BJ could safely say she knew better than to listen to by now.


	21. I've Got So Much Honey The Bees Envy Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hardison is Alec today. I have no idea why he just is.
> 
> Fandom: Leverage  
> Ship/s: Parker/Eliot/Hardison  
> Title from: 'My Girl' by The Temptations  
> Rating: somehow this ended up at a middling T despite my having no intentions that way. the guys and gal be horny i guess. Nothing actually happens, it's just discussion.

Eliot shouldered past the half-closed door, hands full with a tray of lightly steaming chicken soup. Both Alec and Parker perked up at the sight, Parker instantly pushing into a sitting position – her agility was apparently preserved even when she otherwise looked like she was on the brink of death – and Alec struggling up after her.

“How did both of you get the flu at the exact same time? Huh?” Eliot complained, pushing the coffee table he’d brought in yesterday towards the bed with one foot and putting the tray down on it.

“It’s not flu,” Alec said mournfully. “I think it’s the plague.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘the plague’. And you definitely don’t have bubonic plague.”

“You should go, save yourself from the plague,” he rolled on. “Leave me and Parker to die in peace.”

“I don’t want to die in peace,” Parker muttered.

“And where exactly would I go? I foolishly agreed to live here, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I’m sure Nate would let you crash at the apartment if you explained the situation.”

“And ruin my back on his crappy fold-out from 1983? No thank you. I’ll stick with sleeping on the couch here, for as long as you two are snoring like wild hogs. Anyway, this way I’ll get whatever it is just as you’re getting better, and _you’ll_ have to take care of _me_.”

“No, don’t do that to me!” Alec wailed. “You know she’ll make me do everything.”

Parker sniffled, then agreed, “I don’t make soup.”

“Better payback on one of you than neither.”

“This is what I get for shacking up with two common crooks.”

Eliot ducked his head and frowned at Alec. “You’re a common crook too,” he pointed out.

“Babe, there ain’t nothing common about me.” The line was robbed of most of its smoothness by the coughing fit he broke into at the end of it. Parker slapped him on the back, hard enough that it pushed him forward and actually seemed to exacerbate the coughing, and Eliot sighed and reached over, pushing Parker’s hand away and Alec back into an upright position, rubbing circles between his shoulder blades until he stopped coughing.

Parker folded her arms, glaring sulkily at Eliot until he looked over and said, “What?”

She gestured at where his hand was still resting on Alec’s back. “How come I don’t get that?”

“You’re not coughing,” Eliot informed her.

“I could be.”

“But you’re _not_.”

“Hmph,” she declared, and settled back, still glaring slightly.

“I’m so glad to learn that there actually is a situation in which the two of you act even more like children than usual,” Eliot said sarcastically, turning around to pick up the soup tray again. “Come on, huddle together, this is going to spill if you don’t coordinate it. I’m not going to have my perfectly good chicken soup meet that fate. Also, you’ll get burnt.”

“Wow, I feel so prioritised,” Alec grumbled, obediently budging closer to Parker until Eliot could lay the tray across their laps. The steam rose up into their faces, and he sniffed appreciatively. “Actually, I take it back, even past whatever rock monster’s taken up residence in my sinuses I can tell that this deserves first place.”

“Come sit up here with us,” Parker requested. Although possibly it had an edge more demand in it than your standard request. She indicated Alec’s other side, where there was now more than enough space to fit a reasonably sized Eliot.

“My soup’s still out there in the pot,” Eliot replied. “I have to eat too, you know.”

“You can share ours.”

“No, you need to eat all of that if you’re actually going to get better before I get completely fed up and abandon you to your virus.”

Parker’s forehead creased, and he quickly added, “I’m not actually going to abandon you. But I’m not going to promise I won’t go wreck my back at Nate’s for a couple of nights if this goes on much longer.”

“I know you’re not going to abandon us,” she dismissed. “Not over this. I was trying to figure out if I could tie you to the headboard before you figured out a way to escape without hurting me.”

Eliot blinked at her. “Not over anything, Parker,” he corrected. “And I really don’t think you’re well enough to be contemplating things like that.”

“You can’t promise that. But if you ever did it would be because you were misjudging something you did and thought we didn’t want you anymore.”

He was back to blinking at her. For someone who couldn’t read people at all most of the time, she occasionally had a frighteningly good and specific grasp of their psyches.

“And I didn’t mean it in a sexy way,” she continued, heedless. “Would you like that? We can talk about that later. I just meant to make you stay now.”

“No, I wouldn’t like that,” he told her. “Not into the physical restraints. And again, I have to go get my own dinner.”

She squinted at him. “Do you promise to come right back?”

Throwing his hands in the air, he agreed, “Yes, I’ll come right back,” as he turned around. Slurping sounds followed him out as Alec, who’d been ignoring them entirely in favour of gently blowing on his soup, finally started eating it.

He could hear them muttering to each other as he ladled out his own and turned the heat off under the pot, putting the lid back on to let it cool before it went into the fridge for tomorrow. He pulled a teatowel out of the cupboard and used it to carry his bowl back into the bedroom. “What’re you two plotting?”

“Alec would like to be tied to the headboard,” Parker informed him brightly, and Alec looked into his soup in the way that meant he would’ve been blushing if his skin was cooperative with the effort.

“I didn’t exactly say that, mama.”

“After we’re better,” Parker amended, and Alec sighed and gave in.

“Yeah, sure. Eliot, you gonna sit down before she decides to get stuck into uncovering every kink I’ve been into since I hit puberty?”

“I don’t know, that sounds like it could be fun,” Eliot teased, but lowered himself carefully onto the bed besides him. He was still wearing his red-and-white bandanna from cooking the soup, and Parker reached behind Alec’s head and pulled it off, dropping it on top of the headboard, then picking it up again and looking at it curiously.

“Could we use your bandannas?” she asked Eliot, and Alec groaned.

“Woman, we have _got_ to change the subject before I develop a problem I don’t have the energy to solve.”

“I think that’s a yes,” Eliot told Parker. “Now eat your soup so you can get better and implement it.”

She blew on it, then lifted a spoonful to her mouth thoughtfully. After swallowing it, she said, “Do you really think chicken soup helps with getting better?”

“Yes,” Eliot and Alec answered simultaneously.

“But I mean, how? It’s not like it has drugs in it or something. There’s no drugs in it, right?”

“There’s no drugs in it,” Eliot confirmed.

“It just does,” Alec said. “Chicken soup has mystical healing properties, and it’s better to leave them unquestioned.”

“Actually, there’s an amino acid in the chicken which clears mucus, and the onion and garlic-”

“Please, honey, you know I usually appreciate your weird facts, but I need to maintain my belief in the magic of chicken soup.”

“What about honey?” Parker asked.

“Oh, yeah, honey is an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory,” Eliot answered. “One time in Morocco I was stuck in a house with no first aid kit for days, had to cover my wounds in honey, worked better than any antiseptic cream I’ve used.”

“Great, now I’m going to think about you being wounded every time I try to have toast and honey,” Alec complained. “Or I just think about you slathered in honey, and whaddayaknow, we’re back to the problem of five minutes ago.”

“Shut up and eat your soup,” Eliot grumbled, ignoring Alec’s smirk.

“Eat your own soup,” he retorted.

“Both of you eat your soup,” Parker commanded. “Me too. Then we can have honey, then we’ll get better and we can cover Eliot in honey.”

Eliot muttered something incomprehensible into his spoon, and Alec shrugged. “Sounds like motivation to me.”


	22. Stupid Cupid, Stop Picking On Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fandom: MASH  
> Ship/s: referenced Trapper/Hawkeye and pre-BJ/Hawkeye (or pre-BJ/Peg/Hawkeye, but that requires more reading into it)  
> Title from: 'Stupid Cupid' by Connie Francis

Radar pauses in the doorway of Rosie’s Bar, seeing Hawkeye half-collapsed over the bar nursing a glass of something vaguely golden coloured. It’s the last place on his list to check, so he’s glad he didn’t have to start venturing further out of camp to find him. He doesn’t look good, though. He walks inside, stopping at the stool next to him and saying, “Hawkeye?”

Hawkeye raises his head and immediately adopts his trademarked lopsided grin. “Rosie!” he calls out. “Your finest unfermented red wine for my friend here.”

“One Grape Nehi coming right up,” she answers from somewhere behind the bar, and Radar murmurs his thanks and sits down on the stool. They pause for a moment, and just as Hawkeye looks about to settle back into his maudlin hunched position, Radar blinks and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Why should anything be wrong?” he returns, but while Radar may have the spears Hawkeye kindly refers to as his emotional defences directed at him less than anyone else in camp, he’s still familiar enough with them. He shrugs, and replies,

“You haven’t said anything for three minutes and 30 seconds.”

Hawkeye half-laughs. “You’re too good at this, Radar.”

“... Do you want to talk about it?” Radar asks, unsure of exactly what that offer would consist in but sure that he’ll attempt it if it will help Hawkeye.

“No,” Hawkeye dismisses. “I think this is one problem you can’t fix, kid. Drink your grapes. Grape flavouring. Grape colouring, at least.”

Radar does just that, and it’s another 2 minutes and 45 seconds before Hawkeye says anything else. That’s alright, though. Radar’s comfortable with silence.

“What do you think of BJ?” Hawkeye asks, 2 minutes and 45 seconds later. Radar hesitates, then gives up on attempting to decipher any possible meaning behind the question and just answers.

“He seems nice. He helped calm down Sallie when she was getting nervous about the noise.”

“Yeah. He does seem nice, doesn’t he.”

Radar is watching closely enough to see something twist in Hawkeye’s face at the end of that sentence, and he hazards a half-question of his own. “He’s been in the Swamp for five weeks now. You’d know him better than me?”

“I don’t think anyone knows anything in this camp better than you, Radar.”

He lifts one shoulder in a rounded half-shrug and waits for an answer.

“He’s married, and very in love with his wife, is what he is,” Hawkeye says, shaking himself like a ferret that’s been caught in the rain. Radar had had a ferret once, back at home, and it had gotten very disgruntled whenever it got wet. “Which makes this whole thing entirely unproductive. Ignore me, Radar, I’m sulking. I’ve got myself into a fine flounce, actually, which is stupid of me. What brings you to our little hole in the bullet-ridden wall?”

“I was looking for you,” Radar answers.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Well, I’m here.” He puts his glass down for the first time and jerks up into a slightly more alert posture. “Wounded?”

“No, I needed to check something with you about the soldier who got sent to Tokyo last week. For the forms. It can wait.”

He sinks back down slightly and curls his hand back around his glass, even though he doesn’t seem to actually be drinking it.

“Why are you… flouncing?” Radar ventures, and Hawkeye half-laughs.

“If my heart could get up and walk around outside my body, it’d wear red silk and be called a slut behind its back, Radar. Possibly to its face as well.”

Radar doesn’t respond, distracted by the image of a human heart with little legs wearing a silk nightdress.

“And it’d be fair enough,” Hawkeye continues anyway. “I’m starting to think Cupid has a personal grudge against me, between Trapper leaving and BJ being about the most firmly married man I’ve ever met – I don’t care how much he keeps… looking at me, there’s no way I’m getting in the way of him and Peg. And it’s not like I’m _over_ Trapper, you know? How could I be?”

Rosie slides Radar’s empty Nehi bottle away and hands him another one, casting him a sympathetic look. “He’s been like this all afternoon,” she whispers to him. “Good luck.”

Hawkeye was still muttering something to himself about Trapper as Rosie talked, but Radar missed what it was. “The point is,” he says as Rosie walks away, “that now I just feel guilty about both of them. Even though I’m not _doing_ anything to either of them. Or even planning to.”

Radar sucks up a large amount of grape Nehi, getting up courage, then looks at Hawkeye sideways and says, “Trapper... left another message.”

Hawkeye’s head shoots up, and he shakes it a couple of times. “What? And you didn’t tell me?”

“He said not to give it to you until I thought you needed to hear it. I think.... He said to tell you that he, uh, loves you and that you should find him when you run- when you get out, but that he’s thousands of miles away now. And that you have to find happiness where you can.”

Hawkeye smiles distractedly, eyes glimmering. “That’s the censored version, huh?”

“Ah, yes, sir.”

“Thank you. I... thank you.”

Radar sniffs, then, when Hawkeye doesn’t say anything else, asks, “Do you think you’d feel better if you wrote to them? Trapper and Mrs. Hunnicutt, I mean. Separately. I can give you their addresses.”

“I don’t know what I’d say to Peg Hunnicutt. And Trapper hasn’t written me, I’m not going to interrupt him at home. But thank you for the offer.”

“I did think…” Radar starts, then pauses. He might be wrong about it, but. He doesn’t know if Hawkeye thought of it at all. “When you were declared dead, sir. Your mail got turned back at Tokyo for a while. It’s possible he tried to write…”

Hawkeye stares at Radar in horror. “And got his letter returned saying I’d been killed. God, Radar, you’re right.”

“And as for Mrs. Hunnicutt, you don’t really have to say anything to her about… about this. But maybe just writing to her will make you feel less like you’re intruding? Or whatever you’re feeling?”

Hawkeye frowns at him, then splits momentarily into a wide grin. “You know, for a farm boy from Iowa, you give very good romantic advice, Radar.”

“Thank you, sir. I think.”

“Rosie, put the drinks on my tab,” he hollers over the bar. “I’ve got to go write some letters.”

From somewhere behind the bottles, Rosie mutters something derogatory about Hawkeye and his tab which sounds physically impossible, but then, Radar’s not the doctor.

“And stop calling me sir, please, Radar,” Hawkeye adds as he leads the way out of the bar. “That was my mother’s name.”

Radar shakes his head and follows Hawkeye back to the camp. At least he seems to be in a better mood now. Though Radar doesn’t rate his chances of getting the information for the forms today very highly.


	23. Now Your Life's No Longer Empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ┏┓  
> ┃┃╱╲ in  
> ┃╱╱╲╲ this  
> ╱╱╭╮╲╲house  
> ▔▏┗┛▕▔ we  
> ╱▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔╲  
> ignore 15x20  
> ╱╱┏┳┓╭╮┏┳┓ ╲╲  
> ▔▏┗┻┛┃┃┗┻┛▕▔  
> (except for Dean adopting Miracle and Jack reviving Cas and doing a father-son Heaven redesign. we keep those things)
> 
> Honestly this is because. I love the idea of guest stars dropping in post-finale and Jack turning up and the boys having to be like 'yes this is our son, God'. coupled with a need to actively ignore 15x20. *puts up a large chalk board that says 'ask me about the good series finale that lives in my head rent-free'*
> 
> Fandom: Supernatural  
> Ship/s: Dean/Cas; Sam/Eileen; Jesse/Cesare  
> Title from: 'Carry On My Wayward Son' by Kansas 😊

Cesare was cut off in the middle of recounting the tale of the ghost they’d run into on their way down, and been forced into dealing with despite Jesse’s continuous annoyed insistence that they were _retired_ , dammit, by a knock at the bunker door. “I’ll get it,” Dean said, and set his beer down to jog up the stairs.

Jack was standing on the other side of the door, grinning at him.

“Hey, buddy!” Dean greeted, accepting Jack’s hug and “Hi, Dean,” before peering around him. “Did you bring-”

“He’s coming. One of the angels just wanted to check something with him as we headed out.”

“Okay,” Dean said, but showed no signs of moving, so Jack slipped around him and downstairs.

“Hey, Jack,” Sam said, getting up to hug him. Cesare waved a hand as Sam sat back down, and Jesse raised his eyebrows.

“Right, sorry, guys,” Sam started. “This is Jack. Jack, this is Jesse and Cesare, they’re retired hunters.”

“We were just passing through, thought we’d drop in,” Cesare explained. “How do you...?”

“Cas is my dad,” Jack replied cheerfully, taking the end of that question to be ‘fit in to the family’. “So are Sam and Dean.”

Jesse frowned. “Isn’t Cas-”

“Gay?” Sam interjected. “Yeah.”

“I was gonna say an angel, but okay.”

“Jack’s his adopted son,” Dean called down from the top of the stairs. Sam glanced up at where the ceiling was blocking him from sight, and brought his hands up to translate into ASL for Eileen. “As in, Jack adopted Cas as his father. And then me and Sam somehow ended up with a kid as well.”

“My biological father is Lucifer,” Jack said.

“Also, he’s God,” added Eileen, pointing in Jack’s direction.

“And he’s four years old. Technically,” Sam finished, rounding off the summary.

“.....huh.”

Cesare elbowed Jesse lightly in the side. “And you thought my family was weird.”

“You know what, I’m never gonna say a word about your aunt and her twenty cats again.”

Cas appeared at the bottom of the stairs with a quiet ruffle of wings, and turned to Jack. “Remind me to deal with Galadriel when we return,” he said gruffly. “She is attempting to commandeer sections P and R.”

“Cas!” Dean called, slamming the door and jogging down as Jack nodded.

“Dean,” Cas replied, tilting his head to look up at him with a melting softness that made both Jesse and Cesare and Sam and Eileen automatically glance at each other. They seemed to slip together when Dean reached the bottom of the stairs, moving as one seemingly without action from either of them until Cas was kissing Dean and then Dean was standing besides Cas with his arm under his trenchcoat, thumb hooked into Cas’s waistband. Dean had always gotten a little clingy after Cas came back from the dead, but since Jack pulled him from the Empty, since he felt like he could touch him without mitigating it and hug him without pulling away, he’d been borderline insufferable. Or at least, it would have been insufferable to anyone who wasn’t Cas, who always tilted towards Dean as if he was in orbit around him anyway, and was no longer bothering to hide it. It probably didn’t help that Cas was bouncing back and forth between Heaven and the bunker every couple of days. Maybe if they’d just stayed together for a solid week they’d have gotten the lovey-dovey out of their system. Then again, maybe not.

“Missed you, babe,” Dean said, and Cas bumped sideways against him, moving somehow even closer. When Sam grinned at them, he infused a touch more gravel into his voice to demand, “Give me my beer, Sammy.”

Sam obediently handed it over, and Cas promptly ruined Dean’s attempt to pretend he wasn’t in an epically fluffy chick-flick romance by saying, “I missed you too, Dean,”, bringing one hand up to brush Dean’s cheek, and then stealing his beer.

“Dammit,” Dean muttered, but let go of the bottle.

“Cas, you like beer now?” Eileen asked, surprised, and Cas took one sip before handing it back to Dean to sign, without speaking, ‘No, but Dean likes it when I take his things.’

“I can read ASL, you know,” Dean said dryly.

“I’m not hearing a contradiction,” Sam pointed out.

Dean glared mildly at him, then gestured to Jesse and Cesare. “We’re being rude to our guests, who _don’t_ read ASL.”

Cas turned to them, which also happened to turn him even more into Dean’s side, and waved, looking remarkably like Jack for a moment. “Apologies,” he said. “Dean, are you going to introduce us?”

“Cas, this is Jesse and Cesare. Remember, I told you about them? Guys, as you’ve probably gathered, this is Castiel. Angel of the Lord, also father of the Lord, also construction overseer of Heaven right now. Also my boyfriend.” He was definitely glowing – not blushing, glowing – as he said that.

“Ah, yes, ex-hunters with a ranch. It’s nice to meet you. Thank you.”

Jesse and Cesare glanced at each other. “Thank you?” Jesse asked. “For what?”

“I believe meeting you two was the first time Dean seriously considered the possibility of a relationship with another hunter. And one of the things he left off my list of credentials is that I am also a hunter.”

Sam barked out a laugh, and Dean did blush this time, a little sheepishly. Jesse and Cesare laughed too, and Cesare replied, “Glad to help,” then, to Dean, “Did you really just describe us as the guys with a ranch?”

“No, but he rather belaboured the ranch,” Cas answered, and Sam and Eileen both nodded.

“I was there, he really did,” Sam said.

“I wasn’t, but I’ve still heard about the ranch,” Eileen added.

“Well, you know you’re welcome to come visit any time.”

Dean lit up, grinning. “New Mexico road trip, Sammy?”

“Can I come?” Jack asked. “I’ve never seen a ranch.”

“Aren’t you all-seeing?” Jesse asked, then blinked rapidly as he processed what he’d just said.

Jack tilted his head to the side, considering. “Well, yes, I suppose. I’ve never _been_ to a ranch, though.”

“I’ve never been to a ranch either,” Eileen said. “They’re very American, and hunting here never took me to one.”

“Family road trip?” Sam proposed, and Dean grinned at him. Before he could reply, Jack exclaimed, “Family road trip!”

“Family road trip,” Dean agreed. “Five people’s gonna be a squeeze, though.”

Jack began to raise one hand, and Dean pointed at him. “Don’t you dare mess with Baby, kid.”

“I wasn’t – I could make her fit all of us without any actual physical change, though, if you want.”

“Great, turn my car into an interdimensional portal, why don’t you.”

Jack hummed. “More like the TARDIS. Although I guess the TARDIS is sort of an interdimensional portal too.”

Dean jerked his chin at Sam. “It’s your fault our kid’s a nerd, you know that, right?”

“As if you didn’t host four separate _Star Wars_ and god knows how many _Star Trek_ marathons with him,” Sam retorted.

“He made me watch _Star Wars_ too,” Cas commiserated with Jack.

“I liked it!” Jack chirped, then frowned. “Mostly. Although there was a lot of shooting sometimes. And the name is a bit...”

“Stupid?” Eileen suggested, then shrugged at Dean’s offended look. “What, it is a stupid name.”

“It is,” Jesse agreed. “Although Cesare might throw me out of bed tonight for that.” He threw a glance at Cesare, who was indeed glaring at him, then looked back at Cas with a grin. “Learn from my mistakes, Castiel, keep your silence on this topic.”

Any possible relationship tripwires Cas’s reply could have detonated were avoided by a furry blonde cannonball tearing into the room, headed directly for him. A second later, he had an armful of dog, happily wriggling and licking his face, which Cas bore with a wrinkled nose. “Hello, Miracle,” he muttered into his fur. Miracle’s adoration of Cas had been unexpected given that the usual animal response to angels ranged from mild suspicion and disdain through to outright terror, but then again, this was Cas, and Miracle was a Winchester, and moreover, Dean’s dog. Sam took Dean’s beer as Miracle’s whirring tail put it in danger, putting it on the table and sitting back down. Miracle promptly seemed to realise that his person was right there and briefly turned his attention to Dean, licking his cheek before Cas released him and he jumped down, wandering over to be petted by Jesse.

Jack took one of the two empty chairs, next to Eileen at the head of the table, and tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention before starting a signed conversation with her, fast enough that even Sam gave up on following it after a moment. Looking back at the other end of the table, he’d just started to rise to his feet to go find another chair when Dean sat back in his own and pulled Cas straight into his lap. Sam sank back down, chuckling under his breath as Dean smirked at him, and Cas arranged himself more comfortably, leaning back against Dean’s shoulder and pulling his legs up sideways.

“Anyway, like I was saying,” Cesare said, not blinking an eye, and Jack signed off on whatever he’d been discussing with Eileen and nodded towards Cesare. “Jesse, love of my life, spent the entire ride to the graveyard bitching so hard about it that I was almost driven to murder. And that would have just put me right in the ghost’s shoes.”

“It was _cold_ ,” Jesse complained. “And I thought I’d spent my last night digging up a grave. It’s not fun work.”

The table murmured a general agreement, and Cesare rolled on with the story.


	24. When The Laughter Dies Away, Then I'll Take Care Of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To round us off, this is technically a rewrite of one from way back in 2013, but I didn't actually reread that one because, well. I know I said the concept of cringe no longer exists but that's my writing from 2013 and that's cringe babey. In any case, Merry Christmas or happy whatever else it is you're up to, even if that's just a random 25th of a month, and mayhaps I'll see you next year!
> 
> Fandom: Star Trek  
> Ship/s: Jim/Spock  
> Title from: 'I'll Take Care Of You' by The Chicks

“I heard about Arctus IV, very impressive, son.”

Jim grit his teeth together, nodded, smiled, and accepted Admiral Dirn’s pumping handshake. That marked the third admiral tonight to congratulate him on a mission that had ended in the deaths of eight crewmen and three civilians. At times like this, he sometimes struggled to see how Starfleet had evolved from the warmongering, ignorant-of-life institutions of its past. The admiral spotted someone behind Jim, and wandered off, thankfully, before Jim could snap. All he wanted to do was go home to the _Enterprise_ , mourn his lost crewmen, and go to sleep, but Starfleet holiday functions were Starfleet holiday functions and captains were expected to attend them, even when they’d just spent the day notifying families of their relatives’ deaths.

He moved over to the refreshments table, hoping that if he spent ten minutes looking very intently at various dishes, maybe everyone would leave him alone for those ten minutes. He was three minutes in, staring back and forth between fried kh’sheer worms (which weren’t actually worms, they were some kind of fern-like plant, but they looked so much like worms that everyone called them that) and the bowl of Rigellian punch, wondering what the worms would taste like dipped in the punch, when someone popped up on the other side of the table and hovered there, obviously waiting for Jim to look up. Which, on the one hand, at least they’d saved him from actually trying punch-worms, but he could see through his peripheral vision, from the stripes on their arm, that they were a commodore, and that was really about three ranks higher than anyone he wanted to talk to. Would’ve been four if it weren’t for Spock and Bones. He sighed, and looked up. Commodore Kalish. Could’ve been worse.

“Captain Kirk,” she greeted amiably. “I hear you’re up for a medal.”

Jim managed a polite if tired smile. “That’s the rumour. Although I’d rather not be, for this, all told.”

She nodded. “Loss of life is always to be regretted,” she said quietly, and Jim remembered why he liked her. She was one of the only commodores around who actually seemed to remember having been an active officer. “Still, the scientific gains of Arctus IV are immense.”

Jim narrowly prevented himself from sighing again and muttered a lacklustre agreement.

She continued on about Arctus IV, and Jim kept enough of an ear on it to murmur responses at the correct moments while he drooped into the punch. Hopefully not visibly.

Just as she seemed to be winding down, there was a delicate touch on his shoulderblade and he felt a wave of energy and mild reproach pushed into him through the bond. The reproach suggested that he had been visibly sinking into the table, so he straightened up as Spock came around to his side.

“Commodore Kalish,” he greeted, nodding.

“Commander Spock,” she returned. “Dr. McCoy.”

Jim looked to his other side in surprise, and Bones raised mildly offended eyebrows at him. Jim shrugged slightly in apology, assuming he’d be able to tell that he wasn’t much with the noticing of anything right now.

“I will leave you,” Kalish said, and withdrew. Jim wasn’t sure what Spock had loaded into the two words he’d said to her to make that happen, but he wasn’t going to look a gift Vulcan in the mouth.

Next to him, Bones poked suspiciously at the kh’sheer worms. “What’re these supposed to be?”

“They are Vulcan kh’sheer, Doctor,” Spock answered.

“Ah. No wonder they don’t look like anything a sane person would put in their mouth.”

“They are a delicacy, actually, and widely considered to be delicious, even among non-Vulcans. Not that I would expect your unrefined palate to appreciate delicacies.”

“ _My_ unrefined palate? You subsist entirely on vegetables and, apparently, these weird earthworm-looking things, and you wanna call _my_ palate unrefined?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “The copious amounts of drinks with an inadvisably high alcohol content which you ingest would be liable to destroy any good taste you had ever had to begin with.”

Bones tossed his hands in the air. “You wanna start going on about spirits, you’re gonna have to come after Scotty before me. And your husband here immediately after.”

Jim roused himself at that, patting Bones on the shoulder and smiling slightly. “Thank you, you two, but you don’t have to bicker over here just for my benefit.”

Bones blinked innocently back at him. “Pretty arrogant of you to assume I wouldn’t be arguing with Worm Man anyway.”

“That is not an effective insult,” Spock said mildly. “Worms are an essential part of any ecosystem. And kh’sheer are, in any case, not worms.”

That did make Jim smile properly, turning to see Spock’s stubbornly solemn expression as he extolled the virtues of worms. Spock brushed a hand over Jim’s arm in what it had taken him years to realise was the Vulcan conducting a skim search of Jim’s psyche, and had been even before they were bonded. “Is it time to leave, ashayam?” he asked in a significantly softer voice, and Bones bumped forcefully against Jim’s other side, in what was definitely a Bones exhortation to be honest, as he reached for the little biscuits on the other side of the table.

“I should…” Jim said anyway, waving a hand around the room. “I’m sure there’s at least ten more admirals in this room who want to say the words ‘Arctus IV’ to me.”

“Is it gonna kill them if they don’t?” Bones asked through a mouthful of biscuit, then immediately continued. “No, it’s not. You can trust me on that one, I’m a doctor.”

Jim chuckled. “Yeah, alright. Okay.”

“Excellent!” Bones said, and picked up the plate of biscuits. “Just let me- you think they’ll notice if I take this with me?”

“It is a distinct possibility,” Spock answered drily.

“Eh, whatever,” Bones decided, and grabbed two handfuls of them before leading the trio in a beeline to the door. Jim ducked his head, hiding under Spock’s arm from any other officers who might recognise him, and laughed the whole way out, watching Bones’ determined and thief-ish back.


End file.
